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Title The corner of the living : local power relations and indigenous perceptions in Ayacucho, Peru, 1940-1983

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Author La Serna, Miguel

Publication Date 2008

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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO

The Corner of the Living: Local Power Relations and Indigenous Perceptions in Ayacucho, Peru, 1940-1983

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

History

Miguel La Serna

Committee in charge:

Professor Christine Hünefeldt, Chair Professor Nancy Postero, Co-Chair Professor Everard Meade Professor Michael Monteón Professor Eric Van Young

2008

The dissertation of Miguel La Serna is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm:

______

______Co-Chair

______Chair

University of California, San Diego 2008

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For Joy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Signature Page……………………………………………………………………………iii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………...iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………….....v Maps………………………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..viii Vita……………………………………………………………………………………....xvi Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………xvii Introduction: The Corner of the Living…………………………………………...... 1 Chapter One: Butchers, Killers, and Cattle Stealers: Internal Conflict and Resolution…………………………………………………40 Chapter Two: Dictators of the Consejo, Kings of the Hacienda: Race and Class………………………………………………….………………122 Chapter Three: Beyond the Rivers and Mountains: Inter-Community Relations and Conflict……………………………………….201 Chapter Four: Crossing the River: Initial Peasant Support for Shining Path………………………………………..268 Chapter Five: Defending the Mountaintop: Initial Peasant Resistance to Shining Path……………………………………...311 Conclusion: Turning the Corner……………………………………………………………...383 References………………………………………………………………………………397

Map 1: Peru and the Department of Ayacucho Source: Wikimedia

Map 2: Ayacucho Department

Source: GIS Laboratory, University of California, San Diego

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I first entered graduate school, I wondered how any one person could

complete a task as daunting as a doctoral dissertation. I now realize that no one can accomplish such a feat alone; it takes many. And it is with this in mind that I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to those who had a hand in my intellectual and professional development culminating in the completion of this project.

Thirty minutes into my first History lecture at the University of California, Davis, with U.S. historian Alan Taylor discussing the scandalous love affair between Sally

Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, I decided to declare a major in History. The courses I took and the relationships I cultivated over the next four years with UCD historians

Arnold Bauer, Charles Walker, and Clarence Walker, as well as with anthropologist

Stefano Varese, prompted me to begin asking sophisticated questions about the dynamics

of race and class in the Americas. Their inspiration, guidance, and overall confidence in

my scholarly potential made my decision to pursue a graduate degree an easy one.

Heeding the recommendations of these professors, the Latin Americanist faculty of the Department of History at the University of California, San Diego, took a chance on this (once) young scholar, accepting me into the Ph.D. program in Latin American history. Christine Hünefeldt, my advisor, has an intellectual depth that is matched only by her kind spirit. From the start, she urged me to explore as many studies, theories, and

methodologies as possible before settling on a topic; I emerged with a much more

developed project as a result. Professor Hünefeldt always seemed to know just how to

challenge me academically while still respecting and supporting my interests and

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findings. Michael Monteón also offered a tremendous amount of patience and guidance

as I struggled to define a viable and original topic, and whatever achievements I have made through my research and writing are a direct reflection of his hands-on mentorship

during the early stages of my graduate work. Conversely, it was during the latter stages

of my doctoral studies that Everard Meade offered valuable research and writing tips.

Professor Meade is also an exceptional teacher after whom I have modeled my own

classroom instruction, and I dare say that I am a better teacher as a result. Although our

studies vary drastically in terms of time and place, my work has benefitted tremendously

from Eric Van Young’s vast scholarship, expertise, and tutelage with respect to

indigenous peasant mobilization and culture. Although under no obligation to do so,

Professor Van Young graciously critiqued drafts of my proposals, papers, and chapters

each step of the way, and it was he who advised me to solicit anthropologist Nancy

Postero to be my minor field advisor. As my own work began to take a methodological

turn towards anthropology, Professor Postero accepted a position as my co-chair,

introducing me to a whole new world of methodologies, theories, studies, and contacts in

the field of anthropology and offering thoughtful direction as I entered the research and

writing stage of my project. She truly is a talented teacher, innovative researcher, and

dedicated mentor. I sincerely thank each of these committee members for their tireless

encouragement, support, and friendship.

Other personalities at UCSD have also offered valuable assistance. Department

Chair John Marino endorsed me on more than one occasion with strong letters of support

and departmental nominations for various academic enrichment opportunities, while

Chicano historian Luis Alvarez shared his expertise on the “art” of grant-writing. Were it

not for the selfless clerical assistance rendered to me by Carol Larkin, Nadyne Nawar,

Danielle Swenson, and Maissha Stewart of the Department of History, I most certainly would not have made it this far. I am grateful to Rosalind Streichler of the Center for

Teaching Development for the useful tips on balancing teaching and writing. I would be remiss not to thank our Latin Americanist bibliographer, Karen Lindvall-Larson, for always taking the time to point me in the right direction regarding sources, and to

Michael L. Smith of the university’s Geographic Information System laboratory for taking the time to create a map of Ayacucho. It was my fellow graduate students whose moral and intellectual support I truly appreciated. To this end, a special thanks is due

Latin Americanists Zach Brittsan, Nancy Egan, Mateo Jarrín, Jorge Montesinos,

Stephanie Moore, Jesús Pérez, Cody Petterson, Adam Warren, and Chris Wisniewski, as well as to my non-Latin Americanist friends and colleagues, John Bracht, Lauren Ivans,

Jimmy Patiño, Sjahari Pullom, Ronnie Sokotoff, Brendan Thornton, and Todd Welker.

I have also benefited from communications with other professionals and experts outside of San Diego. Orin Starn took an early interest in my research, offering me tips, literature, contacts, and encouragement as if I were his own student. One of his actual students, Caroline Yezer, volunteered everything she knew about life and research in

Ayacucho. Charles Walker gave me helpful advice and encouragement at all stages of my graduate research and continues to be a source of inspiration. Kimberly Theidon and

María Elena García oriented me to the major works on Shining Path back when I was still searching for an original topic, while Cecilia Méndez and Billie Jean Isbell graciously tolerated my early queries about conducting research in Ayacucho. In fact, I accredit my

Fulbright I.I.E. Fellowship to Professor Méndez’s thoughtful commentary on my research

proposal. I also benefited from a methodological and theoretical training workshop run

by the Regional Oral History Organization (ROHO) at the University of California,

Berkeley, which equipped me with a solid foundation of oral history techniques before I embarked on my research. Once I had completed my research, Jaymie Patricia Heilman rendered valuable insights on writing twentieth-century Ayacuchan history. She, Susan

E. Ramírez, and Brandon Williams commented on portions of the text, while Sally Ades proofread the penultimate draft. I am grateful to these peers for improving the overall quality of the manuscript.

But it was my Peruvian contacts who most directly impacted my research. This started with my pleasant experience in Lima. I thank instructor Nilda Guillén of the

Universidad Pontificia de la Católica’s Centro de Idiomas in Lima for her flexibility in

offering me crash courses in Quechua for three consecutive summers before I embarked

on my field research. During my research year, I was fortunate enough to have obtained

the institutional affiliation of the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, which would not have

been possible without the warm consent of Martín Tanaka Marisa Remy. Historian

Carlos Contreras is the IEP researcher to whom I owe the greatest debt of gratitude,

however, for he went out of his way to explain to me the ins-and-outs of Peruvian

archives, introduce me to his colleagues who specialized in Ayacuchan history, and make

me and my family feel at home in Lima. I would like to thank the directors and archivists

of the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Caretas magazine, and Defensoría del

Pueblo (DP) for allowing me to peruse their archives, and of the Biblioteca Nacional

(BN), Universidad Pontificia Católica del Perú (PUCP), and Universidad Nacional Mayor

San Marcos (UNSM) for granting me access to their libraries. My research also

benefited remarkably from conversations I had and relationships I cultivated in Lima and elsewhere with Iván Caro, José Igue, Nelson Manrique, Rodrigo Montoya, Nuria Sala,

Walter Huamaní, Luis Uriategui, and especially Marté Sánchez Villagómez. Caretas photographer Oscar Medrano took time away from his coverage of the 2006 presidential election on numerous occasions to share and discuss his work on the civil war with me, for which I am enormously grateful. Similarly, Rosario Narváez & Raquel Palomino of

Lima’s Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos (APRODEH) offered me an impressive amount of expertise, contacts, and literature about the civil war in Ayacucho.

In Ayacucho, I was met with an equally warm reception. Adela and Cipriano

López went out of their way to make me and my family comfortable in Ayacucho City, introducing us to contacts and welcoming us into their family with open arms, for which I am eternally grateful. It was doña Adela who introduced me to Delia Martínez, who allowed us to live in her quaint Ayacucho residence during my research year.

Throughout the year, doña Delia’s family, Abel Cisneros, Freddy Cisneros, and Abel

Maygua, made my wife and me feel right at home in Ayacucho City. With my living arrangements well taken care of, the kind folks at the archives of the Archivo Regional de

Ayacucho (ARA), Corte Superior de Justicia de Ayacucho (CSJA), Ministerio de

Agricultura de Ayacucho (MAA), Proyecto Especial de Titulación de Tierras (PETT), and Subprefecto de Huanta (SC) made my research experience a pleasant one. To this end, archivists Teófilo Cuba, Juan Gutiérrez, Virgilio Gutiérrez, and Constantino Pariona deserve special mention. I also benefited enormously from conversations and interactions with several organic intellectuals who have dedicated their lives to raising awareness about and ameliorating the socioeconomic and political plight of their fellow

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Ayacuchans. These individuals include Jeffrey Gamarra, director of the Instituto de

Investigación y Promoción del Desarrollo y Paz en Ayacucho (IPAZ), journalist

Alejandro “Chan” Coronado, historian Freddy Taboada, and Julián Berrocal and Alberto

Tucno of the Centro de Investigación Social de Ayacucho (CEISA). These latter two individuals not only oriented me to Ayacucho’s political landscape, but they rather charitably served as my research assistants for my ethnographic work in my two field sites of Huaychao (Julián) and Chuschi (Julián and Alberto). Because Alberto had already established a rapport with the local populace in Chuschi and Julián in Huaychao during their careers as NGO workers, the local populaces in my two field sites immediately embraced me as an ally and friend. It goes without saying that any richness in my ethnographic field work or oral history is a direct reflection of Alberto and Julián’s cultural sensitivity, academic intuition, and industrious work ethic. I am immensely grateful to have worked with Alberto and Julián in the field and I am honored to have them as friends. Above all, I thank the person who introduced me to these two intellectuals, historian Ponciano Del Pino. Professor Del Pino had a hand in virtually every major development in my research and writing: helping me locate and obtain access to archives; sharing archival sources and rare texts; introducing me to my field site of Huaychao; and commenting on my chapter drafts. He is an exceptional scholar whose selfless pursuit of knowledge has contributed profoundly to what we know about modern

Ayacuchan history, and I am all too aware that my own project would not have been possible without his generosity and friendship. The same goes for the kind folks in

Chuschi and Huaychao who shared their life histories with me and made my research experience possible, fruitful, and memorable. Thank you to the authorities and villagers

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of these two communities, and especially to Leandro Huamán (Huaychao) and Marcelino

Carhuapoma (Chuschi) for inviting me and my research assistants to stay in their homes

during our visits.

Nor would this project have been completed without proper funding. I received a

San Diego Fellowship during my initial years at UCSD, which allowed me to concentrate

fully on my graduate coursework. During that period, summer grants from the

university’s Department of History and Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies

(CILAS) enabled me to conduct research and obtain Quechua-language instruction in

Peru. I am grateful to the Fulbright Foundation for awarding me an I.I.E. fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Lima and Ayacucho during my year abroad. In particular, Marcela Harth, Mizga Rivera, and director Henry Harman of the Lima chapter made sure to address my research and non-research-related concerns. Upon returning

from Peru, generous writing fellowships from the Ford and Guggenheim foundations

afforded me the time to complete my dissertation.

I would like to thank my family for sticking with me through thick and thin. My

parents, Sabad and Susan La Serna, always supported my aspirations as an academic and

writer even when my high school counselors and teachers suggested otherwise. They

also are responsible, for better or worse, for my political leanings, having always

encouraged me to stand up for my principles and against perceived injustices. Most importantly, they taught me, as a first-generation Peruvian American, to be proud of my

heritage. Pride led to interest, interest to curiosity, curiosity to the series of inquiries

culminating in this project. I thank my son, Mateo Gael, “mi chiquitín,” for breathing

new life into me in the middle of a difficult graduate program and for giving me

xiv inspiration to get my work done each day so that I could come home and enjoy watching him grow up. Parent-child relationships aside, my sister and brother, Korah and Matías, were a rock of emotional support during the most difficult times. My relatives living in

Peru, Jorge, Yolanda, María, Carlos, Teresa, Karlos, Piotr, and Olenka La Serna, made my time abroad pleasant, productive, and memorable. My in-laws in the United States,

Lawrence and Rosalie Kaiser, supported my family and our decisions in every way possible, for which I cannot thank them enough.

But it is their granddaughter, Jillian Joy La Serna Brogdon, for whom I save my most heartfelt thanks. Of the two of us, Joy, you were always the one with the most potential. Yet, for whatever reason, let’s call it love, you were willing to pack your bags and come to San Diego for six years and give my career a try. As if that was not asking for enough, you then left behind a dream job in San Diego to live for a year and several summers in Lima and Ayacucho. You spent a good deal of my research year living in these places by yourself while pregnant, undergoing a major operation in a foreign clinic to give birth to our first child. Along the way, you never stopped believing in, encouraging, and supporting me. This work is a small token of my appreciation.

VITA

2002 B.A., with honors in History and Spanish University of California, Davis

2002-2004 Graduate Studies Fellowship San Diego Fellows Program, University of California, San Diego

2004-2007 Teaching Assistant, Departments of History and International Studies University of California, San Diego

2005 M.A. in History, with minor field in Anthropology University of California, San Diego

2005-2006 Research Travel Fellowships Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, UCSD Fulbright Foundation

2007 Instructor, Department of History University of California, San Diego

2007-2008 Dissertation Writing Fellowships Ford Foundation Guggenheim Foundation

2008 Ph.D. in History University of California, San Diego

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ABSTRACT

The Corner of the Living: Local Power Relations and Indigenous Perceptions in Ayacucho, Peru, 1940-1983

Miguel La Serna

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, San Diego, 2008

Professor Christine Hünefeldt, Chair Professor Nancy Postero, Co-Chair

This microhistorical study examines the lived experiences and cultural understandings that shaped indigenous peasants’ divergent responses to the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency in 1980s and 1990s Ayacucho, Peru. Situating the insurgency within a deeper history of power relationships, I argue that microlocal experiences and perceptions with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, and class conditioned Quechua- speaking highlanders’ responses to the insurgency. Those who supported the rebels often did so because they hoped it would bring to justice local actors who had habitually violated morally, traditionally, and collectively-defined standards of conduct for members of their corresponding race, class, and/or gender. In communities where customary authority and justice had succeeded in curbing such deviant social behavior and preserving public order, indigenous peasants resisted the insurgency because they saw Shining Path itself as a threat to the local status quo. My comparative study uses the local experiences of two communities—one whose villagers initially supported the

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guerrilla movement, and another whose villagers violently opposed it—as a watershed for

explaining large-scale responses to the insurgency. This approach allows us to appreciate

the degree to which local histories of domination and conflict, together with the cultural

meanings that villagers’ took away from those histories, motivated indigenous actors on

both sides of the conflict to turn to violence during the civil war. It can also be useful not

only for broadening our understanding of the motives behind collective action, but also in identifying the historical intersections between power, culture, and violence.

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Introduction: The Corner of the Living

In Quechua, ‘Ayacucho’ means “the corner of the dead.” Given its recent history as the epicenter of a civil war between Shining Path guerrillas and Peruvian counterinsurgency forces, an armed conflict that claimed the lives of 69,000 people, most of them Quechua-speaking highlanders, this seems like a disturbingly appropriate name for the department occupying Peru’s south-central sierra. Yet, while on the surface this designation appears to characterize late-twentieth century Ayacucho, my dissertation, entitled The Corner of the Living, renders the violence comprehensible by situating it within a deeper history of indigenous struggle and survival. I argue that long-developing power relationships, social conflicts, and cultural understandings at the local level conditioned indigenous peasants’ responses to the Maoist rebellion. Peasants who supported the rebellion did so because it provided them with an opportunity to resolve local conflicts that had long been undermining their collective values and creating crises in authority, justice, and public order. In communities where villagers felt that these values and structures were intact, Shining Path experienced staunch resistance. Indeed, indigenous peasants living in these villages took up arms against Shining Path because they saw the movement itself as a threat to their core principles and structures.

PEASANTS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, AND COLLECTIVE ACTION IN HISTORIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

This is certainly not the first study to explore the logic behind collective action of

indigenous peoples and/or peasants, and it will probably not be the last. To clarify, most

of the studies that I cite below share Charles Tilly’s broad definition of “collective

action” as a group of people acting together in pursuit of a shared set of (mostly political

and economic) interests.1 This can take the form of organized crime, banditry, armed rebellion and revolution, legal petitions, civil disobedience and protest, land invasions, vigilante committees, social movements, as well as a variety of other forms. Taken this way, collective action is distinct from the “everyday forms of resistance” to which James

C. Scott drew our attention with his 1985 Weapons of the Weak. Scott’s “everyday forms” of resistance consist primarily of “footdragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on.”2

Collective action, on the other hand, is more organized, open, and politically conscious.

In referring to “peasants,” many of these studies agree with Eric Wolf’s broad conceptualization of a class or proto-class of rural cultivators, but they may disagree over the extent to which peasants produce for their own subsistence, turn over their surplus to outside agents and institutions, and engage in market transactions.3 With respect to

“indigeous” peoples, the works featured here most often refer to people of Amerindian

1 Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978), 5, 7-8.

2 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), xvi.

3 Eric Wolf, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1966).

descent who, as Peter Wade asserts, are distinguished from other sectors of Latin

American society at various moments in history as much by their differences in

phenotype and lineage (“race”) as their cultural differences and geographic origins

(“ethnicity”).4 Having provided working definitions of the terms of our analysis, let us

now discuss the historiography of collective action, particularly as it pertains to peasants

and/or indigenous peoples.

Early works, produced in the thick of the Cold War, offered structuralist models

that focused primarily on the impact of global capitalism and modernization on peasants’

political consciousness. Eric Hobsbawm initiated the conversation with his 1959 piece,

Primitive Rebels, in which he called for more scholarly attention on the subject,

particularly on the ability or inability of “pre-political” people to adapt to the advent of

capitalism and modernization.5 Eric Wolf heeded the call, showing that the social,

economic, and political ruptures experienced by peasant communities due to capitalist market penetration historically turned them into “sizzling pressure cookers of unrest which, at the moment of explosion, vented their force outward to secure more living space for their customary corporate way of life.”6 According to Joel S. Migdal, though,

mere exposure to these external forces was not enough to politicize the peasantry.

Instead, these factors needed to coincide with economic crisis. Such crisis, Migdal

4 Peter Wade, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 6-18.

5 Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1959), esp. 3.

6 Eric Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (Normon: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), esp. 294.

continues, served to break down peasant communities’ key institutions, producing a

situation so bleak that they sought alliances with insurgent political forces.7

Other scholars have expanded upon this model to demonstrate the extent to which peasants’ “moral economy” conditioned them for rebellion. E.P. Thompson introduced this concept for his analysis of industrial England, arguing that pre-industrial patron-

client relationships were paternalistically and morally structured, emphasizing subsistence and customary practice over wages. The penetration of the free market challenged this old order, motivating subaltern groups to take collective action in the

name of justice.8 While never using the term “moral economy,” Barrington Moore drew

similar conclusions for his analysis of peasant revolutions. In Moore’s view, peasant

revolutions were less likely to take place in locations where traditional power

relationships, in this case between lords and peasants, had remained in-tact. In cases

where market penetration had weakened the customary institutional links between the

upper classes and the rural poor, peasant rebellions were more likely to erupt.9 In The

Moral Economy of the Peasant, Scott expands on these models to illustrate the ways in

which peasants’ subsistence ethic structured their social institutions and political

behavior. As Scott explains, peasants were willing to tolerate a degree of exploitation from landlords or the state as long as the demands of these outside institutions were not

7 Joel S. Migdal, Peasants, Politis, and Revolution: Pressures Toward Political and Social Changes in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), esp. 20.

8 E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (February, 1971): 76-136; The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 63-65, 67-8.

9 Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993 [1966]), 477-78.

so unreasonable that they inhibited them from sustaining themselves economically. Once this moral standard was breached and they could no longer produce what was humanly necessary to survive, they inevitably rose up in rebellion. This, Scott concludes, is precisely the effect that the introduction of capitalist markets had on peasant communities.10

Some scholars have focused more on the role of the state in fomenting popular rebellion. While not examining peasants per se, Ted Robert Gurr introduces the notion of

“relative deprivation,” arguing that the intensity of collective action men take against a regime is directly relational to the descrepencies that they perceive between the lifestyle that they expect and that which they believe is achievable under a given regime.11 Tilly argues that the changes brought about by industrialization, market penetration, and state formation altered the interests of various sectors of society, including the peasantry, thus creating new tensions, contenders for power and, ultimately, manifestations of collective action.12 Migdal looks more specifically at the role of the state in peasant rebellions, arguing that these insurgencies tended to erupt when nation-states failed to provide peasants with tangible “incentives” (rewards, protection, sanctions, etc.) for accepting their dominance.13 Theda Skocpol emphasizes the importance of international politics, pointing out that modern peasant revolutions have occurred while the nation-state was

10 James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), esp. 90.

11 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).

12 Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution, esp. 229.

13 Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).

preoccupied with international affairs, thus weakening its domestic coercive capacity and ability to supervise the countryside.14

Taken together, these structuralist theories argue that collective action of popular classes is a reflection of market capitalism, modernization, and the capacity of the nation- state. With respect to the peasantry, they hold that these external forces can subvert the traditional social and economic institutions of the rural poor, prompting them to take collective action as a peasant “class” in order to defend their traditional way of life. One will note that these early works make no specific mention of indigenous peoples.

However, when extended to the Andean region, these models were applied to studies of rural highlanders who were both indigenous and peasant. Let us now turn to some of these exemplary works.

Latin Americanists have readily drawn from this structuralist model to explain peasant mobilizations in the Andes. Many of these studies have focused on the transition from colonial to republican rule. Jürgen Golte’s Repartos y rebeliones, which examines the link between the colonial reparto de mercancías and the Great Rebellion of 1780-83, is exemplary. Golte describes the reparto as a form of market participation that Spanish magistrates imposed on indigenous peasants, forcing them to purchase consumer goods at inflated prices. Consequently, peasants became indebted to their magistrates and had little choice but to offer their labor services to pay off their debts. This undercut the subsistence bases of peasant households, eventually leading to the indigenous peasant

14 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).

uprising.15 In Lucha por la tierra y protesta indígena, Christine Hünefeldt demonstrates that indigenous peasants in Peru mobilized frequently and effectively in the period between this movement and the wars of Peruvian Independence. Hünefeldt places land at the center of these mobilizations, emphasizing contentions that often pitted comuneros

(villagers) against indigenous notables, Creole priests, mestizo (mix-raced) landlords, and other indigenous peasant communities.16

Others have focused more specifically on the impact of capitalist penetration on

the post-Independence Andean peasantry. Taking a moral economy approach to the period of capitalist transition from the mid-nineteenth to twentieth-centuries, Florencia

Mallon argues that the primary goal of the Peruvian peasant household was to strive for

“the closest approximation to self-sufficiency.” Initially, then, market penetration was met with stiff, sometimes organized, resistance from the Andean peasantry. In the end, however, peasants became more integrated into the very system that they had originally resisted.17 María L. Lagos explains that the rise of capitalist merchants in the Bolivian

countryside during the early-twentieth century created a sense of class-consciousness

among the nation’s rural poor. Members of this self-identifying campesino (peasant)

class began to take collective political action to defend their mutual interests, staging land

15 Jürgen Golte, Repartos y rebeliones (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1980), esp. 16, 124-125.

16 Christine Hünefeldt, Lucha por la tierra y protesta indígena: Las comunidades indígenas del Perú entre Colonia y República, 1800-1830 (Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien, 1982).

17 Florencia Mallon, The Defense of Community in Peru’s Central Highlands: Peasant Struggle and Capitalist Transition, 1860-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), esp. 24.

invasions, organizing labor unions, and engaging the state politically. By mid century,

this peasant “class” had played a major role in achieving national agrarian reform.18

Political economists have criticized the moral economists’ emphasis on collective security systems and moral solidarity. Emphasizing the tensions between individual and group interests, Samuel L. Popkin presents his peasant subjects as rational actors who often perceive market capitalism as an opportunity to get ahead. For Popkin, one of the main obstacles to collective action is that the peasantry is a class with multiple divisions and ambitions. When peasants do join religious or communist movements, it is usually only because enough of them perceive a direct economic and political advantage to doing so.19 Like Popkin, William Roseberry focuses on political economy of peasant communities, emphasizing relations of power. Roseberry’s peasant community represents “a political association formed through processes of political and cultural creation and imagination—the generation of meaning of contexts of unequal power.”20

Together, Popkin, Roseberry, and other political economists challenge scholars to examine differentiation at the community level. This differentiation often manifests itself in power relationships, but also in the tensions between individual and collective interests. This approach has not carried as much weight among scholars of Andean mobilizations as the moral economy method. One exception is Eric Mayer’s comparative

18 María L. Lagos, Autonomy and Power: The Dynamics of Class and Culture in Rural Bolivia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

19 Samuel L. Popkin, The Rational Peasant: The Political Economy of Rural Society in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

20 William Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994 [1989]), 14.

study of indigenous peasant mobilizations in twentieth-century Peru and Bolivia.

Eschewing the notion of peasant solidarity and collective consciousness, Mayer argues

that top-down state policies had real political consequences at the local level,

exacerbating intra-and inter-community conflict and fomenting internal divisions among

indigenous campesinos. For Mayer, these internal divisions, not class consciousness,

were the main causes of the highland mobilizations that took place during the mid-

twentieth century, as individual comuneros sought to “maximize their gain at a fellow

community members’ expense.”21

Recent studies of the Great Rebellion of the 1780s have reintroduced political

economic analysis without altogether abandoning Scott’s theory of moral economy. In

Power and Violence in the Colonial City, Oscar Cornblit traces the history of the mining

city of Oruro, arguing that different sectors of local society had very different reasons for

supporting or resisting the rebellion. For Cornblit, the uprising can only be understood

by examining the economic and political interests of each of these sectors.22 Sergio

Serulnikov’s Subverting Colonial Authority also examines local politics in the period leading up to the rebellion, focusing on the uprising led by Tomás Katari in Chayanta

(Northern Potosí). Serulnikov detects a “crisis of domination” in Chayanta in the decades preceding the 1780 rebellion. There, indigenous peasants relentlessly pursued litigation to remove their traditional chiefs, the caciques, for four decades preceding the uprising.

21 Eric Mayer, “State Policy and Community Conflict in Bolivia and Peru, 1900-1980,” (Ph.D. diss., in History, University of California, San Diego, 1995), esp. 1, 4, 14, 354, 379.

22 Oscar Cornblit, Power and Violence in the Colonial City: Oruro from the Mining Renaissance to the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru, 1740-1782. Tr. Elizabeth Ladd Glick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Seen in this way, “the events of the late 1740s, the first crisis of domination in northern

Potosí during the eighteenth century, prefigure in many regards the attitudes toward

authority and the law dramatically played out during the mass Indian uprising three

decades later.” It is in this respect that Serulnikov presents the rebellion in Chayanta as

the end result of “a gradual process of social unrest that evolved within the bounds of the existing system of justice and government.”23 Like Serulnikov, Sinclair Thomson detects

a local “crisis of authority” in La Paz in the decades leading up to the Túpac Katari

insurgency.24 Together, these studies have brilliantly reconciled the analytical tensions

between moral and political economy approaches to peasant movements. On the one

hand, they place local relations of domination at the forefront of their analyses. On the

other hand, they recognize that those relations were framed by a peasant moral economy.

Finally, they recognize the importance of diachronic analysis, situating the Great

Rebellion within a larger historical context of local politics. This is an important contribution to studies of indigenous peasant uprisings in the Andes.

As these studies acknowledge, cultural factors are just as important as political and economic ones in determining how, when, and why some indigenous peasants engage in collective action. Before the 1990s, the analysis of culture was mostly the realm of anthropologists. Clifford Geertz revolutionized the concept with his 1973 piece,

The Interpretation of Cultures, in which he advocated a semiotic interpretation of culture

23 Sergio Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority: Challenges to Spanish Rule in Eighteenth-Century Southern Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 21, 123.

24 Sinclair Thomson, We Alone Will Rule: Native Politics in the Age of Insurgency (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).

as publically produced “meaning.”25 In 1989, William Roseberry extended Geertz’s

definition to include a more fluid notion of culture as not only “meaning,” but meaningful

action, as a process rather than a product.26

Cultural analysis did not begin to influence the historiography of indigenous

peasant movements until the late-1980s, when the end of the Cold War rendered Marxist

analyses problematic. Steve J. Stern’s 1987 anthology, Resistance, Rebellion, and

Consciousness, stands out as the first English-language collection to view Andean

rebellion through the lens of indigenous peasant consciousness.27 The collection of essays breached the historiographical tendency to situate indigenous peasants as mere

“reactors” to external forces and instead placed them on the center stage, emphasizing their role as “continuous initiators in political relations.”28 One way in which the essays accomplished this was by analyzing the actions of peasant agents, rather than relying strictly on the words of rebel leaders. Many of the contributors to Stern’s anthology

reinforced “the significance of the eighteenth-century tradition of revolt and Inca-inspired

messianism” in indigenous peasant upheavals from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.

Resistance and Rebellion has had a noticeable impact on the recent historiography

of the Great Rebellion. Nicolas A. Robins’s Genocide and Millennialism examines the

25 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

26 Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories, esp. 28-29.

27 Steve J. Stern, ed., Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987).

28 Steve J. Stern, “New Approaches to the Study of Peasant Rebellion and Consciousness: Implications of the Andean Experience,” in Resistance, Rebellion, and Consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th Centuries, ed. Steve J. Stern (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 5-9.

factors that motivated field-level insurgents to join the revolt in Upper Peru. Robins

believes that these motives can be traced in the symbolic language of peasant actions,

arguing that “the uprising is an example of an ‘inarticulate’ and ‘prepolitical’ people who

spoke clearly, cogently and symbolically through their actions.”29 The World of Túpac

Amaru, by the late Ward Stavig, explores social and cultural values of indigenous peasants living in Quispicanchis and Canas y Canchis, the wellspring of Túpac Amaru’s

Cuzco insurgency. Stavig argues that indigenous beliefs about sex, marriage, criminality, land, and labor diverged from those of their Spanish and mestizo neighbors in the half- century preceding the rebellion, producing irreconcilable tensions that were violently revisited during the 1780 insurrection.30

This “New Cultural History,” as it has been called, has been met with considerable criticism. Stephen Haber and Alan Knight have been among the most vocal critics of New Cultural History, pointing out that (1) it replaces empirical data with abstract theory and jargon, (2) historians’ contemporary political agendas often cloud their historical interpretations, and (3) by focusing primarily on the consciousness and actions of subalterns, it accomplishes what Eric Van Young has called the “apotheosis of agency.”31 Unlike the other two critics, though, Van Young defends the utility of the

29 Nicolas A. Robins, Genocide and Millennialism in Upper Peru: The Great Rebellion of 1780-1782 (Westport: Praeger Publishers, 2002), 173.

30 Ward Stavig, The World of Túpac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

31 Stephen Haber, “Anything Goes: Mexico’s ‘New’ Cultural History,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 79:2 (May, 1999): 307-330; Alan Knight, “Subalterns, Signifiers, and Statistics: Perspectives on Mexican Historiography,” Latin American Research Review 37.2 (2002): 136–58; Eric Van Young, “The New Cultural History Comes to Old Mexico,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 79:2 (May, 1999): 243.

New Cultural History for understanding collective action of indigenous peasants. In his

subsequent work, The Other Rebellion, the author traces the roots of indigenous

mobilization during the wars of Mexican Independence. Van Young asserts his central

aim to “locate in realms of meaning and belief systems the wellspring of collective

action[.]”32 This approach allows the author to establish just exactly who the major actors of the war were and why they showed up on the field of battle. Contrary to what has conventionally been written about the nineteenth-century insurgency, Van Young determines that the major participants of the independence struggle were not the clergy and the Creole elite but indigenous peasants who joined the insurgency for locally-and- culturally specific reasons.

A recent shift within the historiography of collective action in Latin America and the Andes has been towards an analysis of indigenous social movements and claims for citizenship. As Tilly explains, social movements can be seen as distinct from other forms

of collective action in that (1) they are a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back no

earlier than the late-eighteenth century, and (2) they employ a variety of collective, public

performances to make political claims on target authorities such as the state, all the while emphasizing the justice of the cause and solidarity of the participants.33 This paradigm

shift has coincided with recent developments in indigenous politics. After the

quincentennial of the “discovery” of the Americas, indigenous peoples across the hemisphere began engaging in social movements. At first, this took the form of identity

32 Eric Van Young, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 27.

33 Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004 (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), 7.

politics, with indigenous groups from different ethnic and geographical backgrounds embracing their common Native American heritage and advocating political and cultural autonomy vis-à-vis the nation-state. With the advent of neoliberal economic and political reforms, however, indigenous groups began shifting the discourse to one of political integration, demanding that states recognize their rights as citizens to participate in

democratic and state formation processes.34 Historians followed suit, exploring the

multiple ways in which indigenous peoples specifically, and peasants more generally,

have historically influenced state formation processes and negotiated the terms of their

own citizenship through legal and extralegal collective action.

More often than not, these studies have accomplished this by embracing the

findings of two major theorists of state formation. The first is Antonio Gramsci, as

interpreted by Raymond Williams. In Marxism and Literature, Williams details the

evolution of the Gramscian notion of “hegemony.” First defined as “political rule or

domination, especially in relations between states,” Marx expanded the meaning of

hegemony to include “relations between social classes, and especially definitions of a

ruling class.” Antonio Gramsci extended the term even further, Williams explains,

adding that the Italian Marxist saw hegemony as a cultural category as well as a political

34 There is a growing literature on the subject. See, for example, Diane M. Nelson, A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); David Maybury Lewis, ed., The Politics of Ethnicity: Indigenous Peoples in Latin American States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); Kay Warren and Jean Jackson, eds., Indigenous Movements, Self- Representation, and the State in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Rachel Seider, ed., Multiculturalism in Latin America: Indigenous Rights, Diversity, and Democracy (Hampshire, Eng.: Palgrave McMillan, 2002); Eric Langer and Elena Muñoz, eds., Contemporary Indigenous Movements in Latin America (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2003);Nancy Postero and Leon Zamosc, eds., The Struggle for Indian Rights in Latin America (London: Sussex Academic Press, 2004).

and economic one: “It is a lived system of meanings and values—constitutive and

constituting—which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally

confirming. …It is…in the strongest sense a ‘culture,’ but a culture which has to be seen

as the lived dominance and subordination of particular classes.” Following Gramsci,

Williams considers the crucial role played by subalterns in the hegemonic process,

reminding readers that without their compliance and consent, hegemony can neither be

achieved nor maintained.35 This is where scholars have made use of another Gramscian

notion, that of the organic “rural-type intellectuals,” seen as the political and cultural

brokers in charge of negotiating the terms of hegemony and peasant consent.36

The second most influential theorist on nation-making has been Benedict

Anderson, whose book, Imagined Communities, provides a theory of modern nationalism

that academics have found useful for explaining indigenous and peasant social

movements. According to Anderson, members of the modern nation-state “imagine”

their nation as (1) limited, with physical boundaries distinguishing it from other nations;

(2) sovereign, and thus the “gage” and “emblem” of freedom; and (3) a community,

conceived by its members as “a deep, horizontal comradeship.” On this final point,

Anderson elaborates: “It [the nation], is imagined [as a community] because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communication.”

According to Anderson, the members of the modern nation feel so connected to this

35 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 108, 110, 112- 113.

36 Antonio Grasmci, The Prison Notebooks, eds. Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 14.

abstract notion of “imagined political community” that they are willing to die for it. This

can be understood, Anderson insists, only if one considers the image that modern-day

people have of their nation: “[F]or most ordinary people of whatever class the whole

point of the nation is that it is interestless. Just for that reason, it can ask for sacrifices.”

Thus, the nation is presented as apolitical and “pure”—a cause worth dying for.37

Florencia Mallon’s Peasant and Nation is exemplary of the Gramscian and

Andersonian approach to indigenous peasant history. Mallon sees the peasant struggles in nineteenth-century Peru and Mexico as nationalist struggles. Mallon defines this peasant nationalism as “a broad vision for organizing society, a project for collective identity based on the premise of citizenship—available to all, with individual membership beginning from the assumption of legal equality.” Taken in this way, the subjects of Mallon’s analysis expanded the definition of national citizenship to include themselves. On the one hand, Mallon’s thesis supports Anderson’s claim because she contends that Mexican and Peruvian peasants did feel a deep commitment to their

“imagined political community.” In taking up arms against foreign invaders (the French in Mexico and the Chileans in Peru), indigenous peasants demonstrated their commitment to their own sovereign nations. On the other hand, Mallon’s model expands upon

Anderson’s theory by suggesting that subaltern groups can develop their own versions of nationalism which may run contrary to the hegemonic fabrications of the state and the elite. What weapons did Mexican and Peruvian peasants use to contest these dominant hegemonies? Mallon terms one such weapon “communal hegemony.” Communal

37 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. (London: Verso, 1991), 7, 6, 144.

hegemony served as a form of locally-based contestation against the dominant

hegemonies of the state and the elite. Under this structure, local-level peasant notables

resembling Gramscian “rural-type intellectuals” played a decisive role “both in

articulating local counterhegemonic discourses and in mediating among communal,

regional, and national political arenas.” According to Mallon, subaltern groups in

Mexico and Peru experienced a significant degree of success in combating dominant

hegemonies and implementing their own alternative agendas for communal hegemony, which “provided rural peoples with the political and cultural resources to confront, modify, and participate in the regional and ‘national’ processes of state formation in a more autonomous fashion.” Mallon’s book thus serves as a wonderful illustration of how subaltern groups staked their claim in the state formation process and identified their own subjectivities.38

Nelson Manrique takes a similar approach to Peruvian peasant mobilizations

during the late-nineteenth-century War of the Pacific in his book Campesinado y Nación.

Manrique concedes that peasants initially approached the conflict with reticence, but this

had more to do with the fact that the war was originally being fought in Lima. When the

Chilean forces reached the central sierra and began committing abuses against the

peasantry, this apathy quickly turned into rage. Peasants formed guerrilla bands to ward

off the invaders and anyone else who sympathized with the Chileans. According to

38 Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), esp. 4, 75, 317, 221.

Manrique, peasants formed militias during the war precisely to expel a foreign occupier

and its domestic allies. It was, in a word, a nationalist cause for the peasant militiamen.39

Mark Thurner also extends Benedict Anderson’s model to suggest that the colonial elite constructed two “imagined communities”—the “Spanish nation” and the

“Indian nation.” By the late-colonial period, this imagined social boundary separating the indigenous and Spanish worlds blurred significantly. After Independence, Peruvian notables endeavored to erase, or as Thurner writes, “unimagine,” indigenous peoples from national consciousness. Creole nation-builders “shared the notion that the contemporary Indian in his present state had little or nothing to contribute to the progress of modern civilization. In short, contemporary Indians had no history, no contemporaneity. They were simply, and irremediably, hung over.” As Thurner demonstrates, the indigenous peasantry had other plans. Rather than simply stand by while Creole notables wrote them out of Republican history, the indigenous peasants of

Hualyas-Ancash demanded a voice in the state formation process. Through a combination of legal petitions and popular uprisings, villagers expressed their desire for a

“‘republican’ engagement with the state, where access to the ‘community of resources,’ or commons, and protection from abuse were guarded by the state.” By demanding a political dialogue with the new administration, indigenous members of the young republic forced Creole and mestizo nation-makers to recognize them as a vivid sector of

Peruvian society.40

39 Nelson Manrique, Campesinado y Nación: Las guerrillas indígenas en la guerra con Chile (Lima: Centro de Investigación y Capacitación, 1981).

40 Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Postcolonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 8, 12, 114.

Charles Walker’s study of nineteenth-century Cuzco also speaks to the strong

impact of the indigenous peasantry on state formation. He contends, “Indians not only

followed leaders such as Túpac Amaru and Gamarra, but also influenced the movements’

political platforms by negotiating the terms of their participation. …[T]hey not only

defended their political and economic rights, but limited the course of action that political

groups could take in the Andes.” Walker suggests that Creole Patriots recognized very

early on the importance of incorporating the indigenous sector into local, regional, and

national political consciousness. In short, Creole caudillos (strongmen) relied on the

indigenous peasantry for political support, and they therefore made every effort to

develop clientelistic relations with them. Walker uses this notion to explain why the

early Gamarra government adopted an “Inca-styled” government and why the caudillo

himself occasionally evoked Tawantinsuyo. While the Republic itself did not identify as

a neo-Inca state, “virtually every political, social, and cultural manifesto from Cuzco

referred to the Incas[.]” In the final analysis, Walker admits, political movements of the

early Republic overlooked indigenous peoples and largely failed to include them in most

political circles. Still, caudillos’ unwillingness to erase the indigenous peasantry from

Republican agendas speaks to the peasantry’s strong influence over the development of

the nation-state.41

Y se armó el tole tole, by Núria Sala i Vila, describes the period between the Great

Rebellion and the wars for Independence in the Peruvian Andes as one in which changing

policies and local views regarding colonial tribute fomented widespread social

41 Charles Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780-1840 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 2-3, 170.

movements among the indigenous peasantry. These movements at times appeared locally

based and internally oriented, but in fact they represented a broader subaltern claim

against colonial domination. In the end, it was this grassroots rejection of colonial tribute and colonialism on the part of the indigenous peasantry that served as the major precursor for political independence.42

If Sala i Vila’s book examines state formation processes from the bottom-up, then

Brooke Larson’s analyzes it from the top-down, emphasizing the different ways that

Andean nation-builders dealt with “the Indian problem,” described as the debate over the

extent to which indigenous peoples should be integrated into national political

consciousness. Still, Trials of Nation-Making does not neglect indigenous peasant

agency, showing that this was in fact a negotiated process. Through a combination of

legal initiatives, coalitions across racial and class boundaries, and open rebellion,

indigenous Andeans insured that “the more hidden counternarratives of native Andean

nationalist imaginings, ethnic resurgence, and everyday forms of resistance [also] went

into the unmaking, or reordering, of postcolonial political formations.”43

Most studies of this kind on the twentieth-and-twenty-first centuries have focused

on Bolivia and Ecuador, two nations that have been a hotbed of indigenous social

movements since the 1990s. In Campesinos revolucionarios en Bolivia, José M. Gordillo

argues that through their collective action, indigenous peasants from Cochabamba not

only helped bring about the 1952 revolution in Bolivia, but they also negotiated the terms

42 Núria Sala i Vila, Y se armó el tole tole: Tributo indígena y movimientos socials en el virreintato del Perú, 1784-1814 (Huamanga, Ayacucho: Instituto de Estudios Regionales José María Arguedas, 1996).

43 Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810- 1910(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 51-52.

of that revolution and the character of the revolutionary state to follow. Due to their

relentless political initiative, Bolivia’s indigenous peasantry had thus carved out a

permanent place for themselves in national political discourse.44 In Now We Are

Citizens, Nancy Postero situates the political movement culminating in the 2005

presidential election of indigenous peasant Evo Morales within a larger historical and

political context of indigenous-state relations in Bolivia. Just as earlier efforts by the

Bolivian state to answer the "Indian question" (akin to Larson’s concept of the ‘Indian

problem’) failed to address the needs of the nation's large and diverse indigenous

population, the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, championed by the elite as “democratic”

in that they emphasized individual liberties, only benefited a small percentage of

indigenous subjects who possessed the economic, political, and technical tools to gain a

foothold in Bolivian civil society. Most indigenous subjects, however, felt that they had

been left out of the country's democratizing processes. This resulted in a series of

movements beginning in the early-twenty-first century in which indigenous Bolivians,

allied with other popular sectors, began demanding the individual citizenship rights that

these reforms were supposed to have guaranteed them.45 For Ecuador, Marc Becker

sheds light on the historical roots of the nation’s contemporary indigenous movement,

44 José M. Gordillo, Campesinos Revolucionarios en Bolivia (La Paz: Editorial Plural, 2000), 21, 28, 46, 189, 238.

45 Nancy Postero, Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).

showing that indigenous peoples had been working together with leftist activists to shape

their own “national” identity as early as the 1920s.46

Recent scholarship has carved out a space for the Peruvian case in the

historiography of modern-day social movements. Anthropologist María Elena García

establishes that, contrary to what other scholars have concluded, indigenous highlanders

in Peru have mobilized frequently and effectively in recent years, particularly in their

rejection of multicultural educational reform initiatives. García historicizes this recent

political development by connecting it to the discursive construction of race and

citizenship in early-twentieth-century Peru. At issue then, as now, García contends, was

the issue of whether indigenous peasants should receive the same access to public

education as their fellow citizens.47 Similarly, José Luis Rénique analyzes the ways in

which indigenous peasants in Puno mobilized, worked, and dialogued with and against

other segments of Peruvian society to ultimately shape the national political system.48

Orin Starn’s Nightwatch, which traces the history of the rondas campesinas (peasant patrols) in the northern provinces of Cajamarca and Piura, is perhaps the best case for the existence of a peasant social movement in late-twentieth-century Peru. Starn traces the rise of the peasant patrols from the mid-1970s to the end of the century, explaining that in the absence of strong state penal system, campesinos suffered increasing thefts in and

46 Marc Becker, “Indigenous Nationalities in Ecuadorian Marxist Thought,” A contracorriente 5, no. 2 (Winter 2008): 1-46.

47 María Elena García, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

48 José Luis Rénique, La batalla por Puno: Conflicto agrario y nación en los Andes peruanos. (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004).

around their villages. Villagers finally organized and led vigilante patrols that combed the countryside at night for vandals. Ronderos (patrollers) usually held public trials for

those whom they caught, with the ultimate aim being not so much “punishment” as

incorporation back into the community. The movement quickly proliferated, and by the

1980s the peasant units patrolled every community, province, and department in northern

Peru, making it a true grassroots social movement for peasant justice. It is worth mentioning, however, that this was primarily a movement of mestizo peasants and not of indigenous peoples.49

The issue of whether or not the Shining Path guerrilla rebellion should be

considered an indigenous peasant movement is a complicated one. As Timothy P.

Wickham-Crowley observes, guerrilla movements and revolutions in late-twentieth-

century Latin America have hinged on peasant and indigenous support.50 At the same

time, Cynthia McClintock has undergone significant criticism for labeling the Shining

Path guerrilla insurgency a peasant one, while the same has become of Juan Ansión’s

depiction of the revolt as indigenous.51 As is now well known, the majority of Shining

Path’s leaders and combatants were not Quechua-speaking campesinos but rather mestizo

49 Orin Starn, Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 128.

50 Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas & Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

51 Cynthia McClintock, “Why Peasants Rebel: The Case of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso,” World Politics 37 (1984): 48-84; Juan Ansión, “¿Es luminoso el camino de Sendero?” in Caballo Rojo 108 (1982). For a rather uncharitable criticism of McClintock, see Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, “The New Chroniclers of Peru: US Scholars and their ‘Shining Path’ of Peasant Rebellion,’ Bulletin of Latin American Research 10:2 (1991), 133-91. For a more considerate critique of the Ansión thesis, see Orin Starn, “Maoism in the Andes: The Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path and the Refusal of History,” Journal of Latin American Studies 27:2 (May, 1995), 399-421.

intellectuals who lived in urban centers and spoke Spanish. My dissertation asks us to

reconsider not only McClintock and Ansión’s preliminary observations about the social

and racial components of the rebellion, but also how we define collective action more

generally. When it comes to modern-day civil wars such as the one that took place in

1980s and 1990s Peru, we find that there were many other forms of action that lay, as

Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn appropriately put it, “between resistance and revolution,”

that is, “the ample and charged territory between the cataclysmic upheaval of

revolutionary war and the small incidents of everyday resistance, namely the thousands

of social struggles where people enter into open protest yet do not seek the total

overthrow of the social order.”52 It is in this realm of action that we find the type of

approval and disapproval of Shining Path that we may appropriately define as both

indigenous and peasant. These were indigenous peasants who willingly rendered all

kinds of support to the insurgency because they perceived real, tangible benefits in doing

so.

It is worth reiterating that the Shining Path civil war was a violent one that

claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Quechua-speaking highlanders. Why, then,

would indigenous peasants willingly support an insurgency that they knew to be so

violent and that they knew would victimize other Quechua-speaking highlanders? It is here that I find the work of Charles Tilly and Stathis N. Kalyvas on collective violence insightful. Tilly explores the points of intersection between social relations and mass violence. In short, he points out the necessity of examining the dynamics of interpersonal

52 Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn, Introduction, Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest. Eds. Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 3.

social interactions in order to understand the multiple causes and manifestations of

collective violence. For Tilly, these interpersonal interactions “transform prevailing

beliefs, inhibitions, and sentiments in the course of collective violence[.]”53 Whereas

Tilly examines various manifestations of collective violence, Kalyvas focuses specifically

on civil war violence. He describes violence not as a mere product of civil war, but also as a larger process of local conflict and tension that also produces civil wars:

“Approaching violence as a dynamic process allows an investigation of the sequence of decisions and events that intersect to produce violence, as well as the study of otherwise invisible actors who partake in this process and shape it in fundamental ways.”

Emphasizing systematic research at a microlocal level, Kalyvas presents “A model of selective violence [in civil wars] that sees the interaction between actors operating at different levels to result in the production of violence in a systematic and predictable way.”54

Following Tilly and Kalyvas, I contend that in order to make sense of the

different manifestations of collective violence during the Shining Path civil war, we must

first understand the dynamics of individual and group violence and social interactions

during times of peace. My study therefore moves beyond the analysis of collective action

and towards a more systematic analysis of violence. The main question that I attempt to

answer in my study, then, is not why indigenous peasants rebelled, but rather why they

53 Charles Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 23.

54 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 22, 6.

advocated the type of collective violence that siding with the insurgency or

counterinsurgency entailed.

In answering this question, I draw from and extend the theories of moral

economy, political economy, and cultural history detailed above. While I agree with

Geertz that culture is a complex system of symbols and texts from which individuals and

groups derive meaning,55 I share Roseberry’s conviction that we must recognize the

historical processes, social interactions, and power relationships that shape it. As

Roseberry maintains, “Real individuals and groups act in situations conditioned by their

relationships with other individuals and groups, their jobs or their access to wealth and

property, the power of the state, and their ideas—and the ideas of their fellows—about

those relationships. Certain actions, and certain consequences of those actions, are

possible while most other actions and consequences are impossible.”56 Thus, while the initial decision to support or resist Shining Path was for indigenous agents to make, their local relationships and structures, along with the meanings that villagers derived from them, conditioned their divergent responses to the movement. For it was, following

Scott, precisely in the villages in which indigenous peasants perceived that a subversion of their moral economy had taken place that Shining Path would eventually receive the most support.57 What I am suggesting here is that local power relationships and

indigenous cultural understandings played as important a role in shaping peasants’ responses to Shining Path as their political ideologies about the nation-state. Much like

55 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures.

56 Roseberry, Anthropologies and Histories, 54.

57 Scott, The Moral Economy.

the indigenous supporters of the Mexican independence movement described by Eric Van

Young, Ayacuchan peasants on both sides of the conflict “stayed pretty close to home,

seemingly preoccupied with reequilibrating local social relationships, settling old scores,

and protecting community integrity.”58

INDIGENOUS PEASANTS AND THE SHINING PATH

There are enough studies on Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, or Sendero) that

Andeanists refer to this academic subfield as “Senderology.” Early investigations,

conducted throughout the 1980s and early 1990s primarily by Peruvian journalists and

scholars, endeavored quite simply to make sense of the revolt. Through their

correspondences with Peruvian newspapers, journals, and magazines, Carlos Iván

Degregori, Raúl Gonzales, Gustavo Gorriti, Nelson Manrique, and Rodrigo Montoya—

among others—successfully identified Shining Path’s major leaders, supporters,

ideologies, and tactics.59 To date, works by these researchers, together with the

subsequent English-language monographs and compilations of David Scott Palmer,

Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, Steve J. Stern, and Lewis Taylor offer the most

comprehensive analyses of Shining Path.60

58 Van Young, The Other Rebellion, 138.

59 See articles in Caretas, La República, Quehacer, and El Diario, particularly from 1982-1992.

60 See Gustavo Gorriti, The Shining Path: A History of the Millenarian War in Peru, trans. Robin Kirk (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999 [1990]); Carlos Iván Degregori, Ayacucho 1969- 1979: El Surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990); David Scott Palmer, ed., The Shining Path of Peru (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994 [1992]); Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear (London: Latin America Bureau, 1992); Steve J. Stern, ed., Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.); Nelson Manrique, El tiempo del miedo: La violencia política en el Perú, 1980-1996 (Lima: Fondo Editorial del

Early studies on the Quechua-speaking peasantry affected by the armed struggle

focused on their victimization. Developed primarily by human rights advocates while the

rebellion was still underway, these works raised awareness about the atrocities committed

by insurgent and state military forces.61 These accounts asserted that Andean peasants

were essentially caught “between two fires,” forced by the competing armies of the

Shining Path and Peruvian state to fight against their will, their only alternative being to

flee their rural homes at the risk of being discovered and killed by either side.62 This

concern with peasants’ suffering continued after the violence had dissipated, culminating in the creation of the government-sponsored Truth and Reconciliation Commission in

2001. Comprised of Peruvian and international scholars, lawyers, religious and civil

leaders, and human rights advocates, the Truth Commission collected 17,000 testimonies

from victims of the violence and in 2003 presented its findings in a nine-volume, 8,000- page Final Report.

Some scholars, particularly in the field of anthropology, have taken issue with this emphasis on indigenous suffering and instead call attention to the real choices that these actors made during the civil war. William P. Mitchell frames indigenous peasant responses to the insurgency within a larger global process of capitalist market penetration

Congreso del Perú, 2002); Lewis Taylor, Shining Path: Guerrilla War in Peru’s Northern Highlands (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006).

61 See, for example, Amnesty International, Peru: Human Rights in a Climate of Terror (London: Amnesty International Publications, 1991); America’s Watch, Peru Under Fire: Human Rights Since the Return to Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).

62 See Robin Kirk, The Decade of Chaqwa: Peru’s Internal Refugees (US Committee for Refugees, May 1991); Michael L. Smith, Entre dos fuegos: ONG, desarrollo rural y violencia política (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1992).

in the Peruvian countryside. Although adopting an economic determinist model, Mitchell emphasizes indigenous peasant agency by showing that individual actors responded to these structural changes in diverse ways, with some joining the insurgency, others violently resisting it, and many more fleeing the violence to seek new opportunities elsewhere.63 Others have chosen to highlight the counterinsurgency as a medium for indigenous peasant agency. Peruvian scholars José Coronel, Carlos Iván Degregori,

Ponciano Del Pino, and Nelson Manrique, along with North American anthropologists

Orin Starn and Mario Fumerton, evaluate the phenomenon of the peasant

counterinsurgency militias known as rondas campesinas.64 The contribution of these works lies in their critique of the peasant-as-victim narrative—particularly the hypothesis

that Peruvian security forces obliged peasants to take up arms against Shining Path.65

These academics recognize peasant agency, pointing out that in many cases counterinsurgency patrols were grassroots efforts.

63 William P. Mitchell, Voices from the Global Margin: Confronting Poverty and Inventing New Lives in the Andes (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006).

64 See articles by Coronel, Degregori, Del Pino, and Starn in Carlos Iván Degregori, et al., eds., Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996). See also Orin Starn, “Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in Peru’s Andes,” in Richard G. and Orin Starn, eds. Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997); Orin Starn, Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in the Central-South Andes,” in Steve J. Stern, ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Nelson Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra” in Steve J. Stern, ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Mario Fumerton , From Victims to Heroes: Peasant Counter-rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980-2000. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2002.

65 This is still a widely-held view within Senderology. See, for example, Rodrigo Montoya, Eulogio de la antropología (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 2005), 288-294.

Recently, social scientists have shifted focus from the civil war itself to its

aftermath, exploring the multiple ways that indigenous peasant communities have

attempted to deal with and ultimately move past the violence. Studies by anthropologists

Olga Gonzalez, Marté Sánchez Villagómez, Kimberly Theidon, and Caroline Yezer

provide excellent examples of the ways in which Ayacuchan peasants have used memory

as a tool for achieving reconciliation at the household, community, and national levels.66

Complementing this recent anthropological focus on the aftermath of the civil war is a burgeoning historiography on its precursors. Steve J. Stern’s anthology, The Shining and Other Paths stands out as the first concerted effort to historicize the armed conflict.

In it, Peruvian historian Nelson Manrique contextualizes the rondas campesinas, showing that peasant communities with strong nationalist histories also tended to support the state’s counterinsurgency campaign against Shining Path.67 Following Stern and

Manrique’s lead, historians Cecilia Méndez, Jaymie P. Heilman, and Ponciano Del Pino

demonstrate that Ayacucho’s Quechua-speaking peasantry had been involved in an

ongoing dialogue with the Peruvian state over their integration into the nation’s political

and economic fabric well before the Shining Path insurgency. Seen in this way, the

66 See Kimberly Theidon, Entre prójimos: El conflicto armado interno y la política de la reconciliación en el Perú (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004).

Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos olvidados de historia y memoria: La violencia política en las comunidades de Chuschi y Quispillaccta, 1980-1991 (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad Nacional Mayor San Marcos, 2007); Olga González-Castañeda, “Unveiling Secrets of War in the Peruvian Andes” (Ph.D. diss., in Anthropology, Columbia University, 2006); Caroline Yezer, “Anxious Citizenship: Insecurity, Apocalypse and War Memories in Peru’s Andes” (Ph.D. diss, in Cultural Anthropology, Duke University, 2007).

67 Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra,” 219.

insurgency can be seen as the most recent and radical manifestation of a broader

historical struggle for indigenous citizenship.68

My dissertation draws from and expands on each of these frameworks by

illustrating how indigenous peasant agency in Ayacucho during the Shining Path

rebellion was framed by historically-and locally-situated power relationships and cultural

understandings. Once again, I find Kalyvas’s theory of civil war violence useful here.

Kalyvas emphasizes the disjunction between the political aims of the civilians who

support a guerrilla insurgency and those who conceptualize it and carry it out, writing,

“[T]he habitually cited causes of group division (e.g., ideological, social, or ethnic

polarization) often fail to account for the actual dynamics of violence: the game of record

is not the game on the ground…[which is] informed by the demands of irregular war, the

logic of asymmetric information, and the local dynamics of rivalries.”69 In other words,

civilian noncombatants will sometimes embrace the violence of a guerrilla insurgency not

only because they agree with its ideological aims, but because they see it as an

opportunity to settle local scores. Kalyvas continues:

While political actors ‘use’ civilians to collect information and win the war, it is also the case that civilians ‘use’ political actors to settle their own private conflicts. Put otherwise, civilians may effectively turn political actors into their own private ‘contract killers.’…[Thus,] rather than reflecting the politicization of private life, civil war violence often privatizes politics. Insofar as it reflects local conflicts and personal

68 See Cecilia Méndez, The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820-1850 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Jaymie Patricia Heilman, “By Other Means: Politics in Rural Ayacucho before Peru’s Shining Path War, 1879-1980” (Ph.D. diss., in History, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2006); Ponciano Del Pino, “Looking to the Government: History, Politics, and the Production of Memory and Silences in Twentieth-Century Ayacucho, Peru” (Ph.D. diss., in History, University of Wisconsin, Madison, forthcoming).

69 Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence, 5-6.

disputes, the intimate nature of violence in civil war can be seen as the dark face of social capital.70

This approach allows us to move beyond tropes that describe the Shining Path civil war

as a case of opposing armies victimizing or manipulating indigenous peasants and to

recognize that the reverse was also true. To clarify, I do not deny that the opposing

armies victimized and sometimes manipulated indigenous peasants. Particularly after

1983, sporadic raids, massacres, and rape became part and parcel of the opposing armies’

“recruitment” efforts. Yet it is important to note that indigenous peasants also took

advantage of the civil war to bring about violent solutions to local matters that were often

only tangentially related to the macro-level politics of the conflict itself. Following the

chronology of rebellion only up through its initial phase has allowed me to move beyond

the heavily emphasized reality of indigenous peasants’ victimization during the civil war

and focus instead on their instinctive, grassroots responses to it. The analysis that I

develop in the following chapters takes seriously Kimberly Theidon’s assertion that “the

idea of being caught ‘between two fires’ does not help us to understand how entire

communities got involved in the brutal violence nor how there was a third fire, made up

of campesinos themselves.”71

A TALE OF TWO VILLAGES

Drawing from detailed archival research, ethnographic field work, and oral

interviews conducted in Lima and Ayacucho over the course of one year and two

70 Ibid., 14.

71 Theidon, Entre prójimos, 20.

summers, my comparative analysis explores the microlocal experiences of two

indigenous peasant communities in Ayacucho in the years leading up to and including the

Shining Path insurgency.

The first village is Chuschi (Cangallo Province). Chuschi is the capital of a district that bears the same name in the region of Cangallo known as the Pampas River

Valley. On the eve of the 1980s insurgency, the community had about 1,100 inhabitants, most of them Quechua-speaking peasants. The community was ideal for agricultural farming, encompassing a diverse ecological climate with fertile valleys and rivers at an altitude of 9,500 feet and high grazing lands peaking at 15,000 feet. Chuschino farmers took advantage of this diverse ecology to produce a wide range of tubers, corn, and broad bean crops. Still, there was a fair degree of social stratification in the community at the time, with some villagers taking up occupation as merchants in one of the handful of community stores or as owners and merchants of the village hotel, located on the edge of the village plaza. Chuschi was also a trade center, hosting weekly markets for trade and barter. The 1962 completion of a main road connecting the village to the departmental capital of Ayacucho City, some 125 kilometers to the northeast, facilitated this market exchange. Neighboring Chuschi is Quispillaccta, a slightly more populated indigenous peasant village. Quispillaccta’s ecological, geographical, and social landscape is similar to that of Chuschi, with the added presence of some salt, silver, and lead mines. Chuschi and Quispillaccta were just two villages in Chuschi District, along with Uchuirre,

Canchacancha, and Chacolla. For the purposes of this study, however, I will focus primarily on the village of Chuschi and secondarily on the neighboring hamlet of

Quispillaccta.72 Chuschi was the location of Shining Path’s first insurgent act, known as

the Inicio de la Lucha Armada (Initiation of the Armed Struggle, ILA). There, Shining

Path guerrillas enjoyed widespread support during the initial three years of the

insurgency.

Huaychao (Huanta Province) is the second community of this study. Huaychao is

located about twenty-five kilometers from Huanta City, in the zone commonly known as

the “Iquichano” highlands, after the ethnic label that outsiders have imposed onto the

zone’s indigenous inhabitants.73 Like Chuschi, Huaychao was also a village of mostly

Quechua-speaking farmers on the eve of the Shining Path insurgency. Unlike Chuschi, it

had existed as a hacienda until 1975-76, at which point it and several neighboring

haciendas were disbanded and the grupo campesino (peasant collectivity) of Huaychao

was created, in accordance with the national Agrarian Reform Law. Before the land

reform, most huaychainos rented small parcels of land on the 700-hectare hacienda for

their own subsistence, hiring out their labor and turning over surplus to the mestizo land

barons. At the time of the land reform, the village consisted of about fifty-five peasant

households (roughly 200 occupants) and several smaller annexes, which included

Macabamba, Ccochaccocha, Tupín, Patacorral, Mallau, and Llalli. Most of these annexes

have since gained recognition as independent peasant communities, but for the purposes

of this study we will consider them part of the community of Huaychao. We can estimate

72 Instituto Indigenísta Peruano, “Informe sobre la comunidad de Chuschi” (Lima, 1967), 1-3; David Scott Palmer, “Revolution from Above: Military Government and Popular Participation in Peru, 1968-1972” (Ph.D. diss., in Political Science, Cornell University, 1973), 220.

73 For an excellent study on the historical and social construction of the ‘Iquichano’ identity, see Cecilia Méndez, “The Power of Naming, or the Construction of Ethnic and National Identities in Peru: Myth, History, and the Iquichanos,” Past and Present 171 (May 2001): 125-160.

the total population of Huaychao at around 500 inhabitants in 1980. After the land

reform, most villagers existed primarily as subsistence farmers. However, at an altitude

of more than 12,000 feet, Huaychao’s harsh, damp climate renders the soil unfavorable to

most types of crop cultivation other than tubers. Huaychainos thus engaged in regional

trade networks throughout the Iquichano highlands and as far away as Tambo, the capital

of La Mar Province, at a distance of about sixty kilometers. Although officially

recognized as an annex of Huanta District, Huaychao in 1980 had no major roads

connecting it to the departmental capital. Instead, villagers traveled to the city on foot

and with the assistance of llamas and other beasts of burden.74 Huaychao was the

location of the first act of armed peasant resistance to the guerrillas. The counter-

rebellion in Huaychao led to the proliferation of peasant counterinsurgency militias, the

rondas campesinas.

The comparative study that follows uses the long-term histories of these two

historically significant communities—Chuschi, the symbolic birthplace of the insurgency,

and Huaychao, the birthplace of the counter-insurgency—as a lens for understanding

divergent responses that indigenous peasants across the Peruvian countryside had to

Shining Path. Due in large part to their historical significance, Chuschi and Huaychao

have received a considerable amount of scholarly and media attention in recent years.

The most notable research on Chuschi has been conducted by North American

anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell. Isbell examined community structures in Chuschi

during the late-1960s and early-1970s and continued to investigate the effects of the civil

74 ACSJA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 143, Expropiación de Huaychao; AMAA, Exp. Huaychao.

war on the village over the following decades.75 After the conflict had subsided,

Peruvian anthropologist Marté Sánchez Villagómez collected oral testimonies about the armed insurgency in Chuschi and the neighboring village of Quispillaccta.76 These studies supplemented the investigative reporting about Chuschi conducted during the civil war by Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti, who also reported on Huaychao.77

Gorriti’s investigations in the Iquichano highlands that encompass Huaychao have been complemented by the ethnographic studies of José Coronel, Ponciano Del Pino, Orin

Starn, and Kimberly Theidon, each of whom chronicled the effects of the insurgency and counterinsurgency in the region.78 My study builds upon this rich ethnographic and journalistic material by illustrating how these local civil war experiences fit within a deeper historical and cultural experience. My principle aim is thus to historicize chuschinos’ and huaychainos’ divergent responses to the insurgency. Specifically, I hope to contribute a deeper understanding of the long-term internal dynamics that shaped the local civil war histories that these researchers have so accurately chronicled. Indeed, the

75 See esp. Billie Jean Isbell, To Defend Ourselves: Ecology and Ritual in an Andean Village (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1985 [1978]); Billie Jean Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses in Rural Ayacucho,” in David Scott Palmer, ed. The Shining Path of Peru (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994 [1992]).

76 Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos.

77 See esp. Gustavo Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” Caretas 733, 23-24; 31 January 1983; Gorriti, The Shining Path, 17-20.

78 See José Coronel, “Violencia política y respuestas campesinas en Huanta,” in Carlos Iván Degregori, et al., eds. Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996); Ponciano Del Pino, “Family, Culture, and ‘Revolution’: Everyday Life with Sendero Luminoso,” in Steve J. Stern, ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Orin Starn, “Villagers at Arms: War and Counterrevolution in Peru’s Andes,” in Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest, eds. Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn, (New Brunswick:Rutgers University Press, 1997); Kimberly Theidon, Entre prójimos.

current study would not have been possible were it not for the important research

conducted on the civil war experiences of these two villages, for this research has

allowed me to make direct connections between the violence of the 1980s and 1990s and

the kinds of internal relationships, conflicts, and violence that conditioned it.

The first three chapters examine local power relationships, cultural understandings, and social conflicts in Chuschi and Huaychao in the forty years leading up to the 1980 Shining Path rebellion. The analysis starts at the most intimate, microlocal level and expands outward in thematic scope with each chapter. In chapter one, I discuss the sources of internal conflict between indigenous villagers, arguing that peasants in both communities expected their compoblanos (fellow villagers) to adhere to an implicit moral code that clearly set the parameters for acceptable comunero behavior.

This moral code was designed to place the internal cohesion and interests of the collective above those of the individual. Nevertheless, individuals still violated this

Andean moral economy. In Chuschi, however, indigenous comuneros and authorities lamented the inability of the traditional mechanisms of social chastisement and state-and- customary justice to curb such behavior in the period leading up to the Shining Path insurgency, leading the rebels to encounter crises of justice and public order. No such crises existed in Huaychao, where villagers accredited customary law and authority for curbing moral misconduct and preserving public order. In chapter two, I move from relationships and interactions among indigenous peasants to those between comuneros and their non-comunero neighbors. It is here that we get a better understanding of the ways that race and class impacted indigenous peasants’ historical memory. Here, I introduce the notion of a “culturally defined social pact” between Andean peasants and

mestizo power holders. Indigenous chuschinos saw their non-indigenous notables as

increasingly apathetic to the terms of this tacit pact in the lead-up to the Shining Path

insurgency, producing a local crisis of authority. Meanwhile huaychainos saw their

mestizo landowners as remarkably respectful of the terms of this social pact. Far from

perceiving a crisis of authority, huaychainos respected their non-indigenous power

holders for their ability to uphold public order through a stern administration of justice.

Chapter three moves beyond intra-village relationships and conflicts to explore what we

might call inter-village interactions. Unlike Huaychao, Chuschi became a hotbed of

inter-community conflict between 1940 and 1980.

Having established the particular dynamics of microlocal experiences in

indigenous peasant villages, I move in the final two chapters towards an explanation of

indigenous peasants’ divergent responses to the 1980s insurgency. In chapters four and

five, I show that the reactions of comuneros in Chuschi and Huaychao were entirely

consistent with their unique local histories, thereby rendering comprehensible their

collective behavior and manifestations of violence during the civil war. At issue here

was indigenous peasants’ notion of justice and public order. As was the case with the

grassroots rondas campesinas in northern Peru described by Orin Starn, indigenous

peasants in Ayacucho were concerned with correcting behavior that they believed to be

morally and socially hazardous. I argue that Shining Path received the most enthusiastic

support in communities where these behavioral boundaries had been breached beyond

repair in spite of the efforts of state and customary authorities. Shining Path, with its ad-

hoc “popular trials” and radical violence, offered indigenous peasants in these

communities a direct solution to these perceived crises of authority, justice, and public

order. Conversely, Shining Path received the staunchest opposition in locations where

customary and grassroots forms of justice, akin to that of the rondas campesinas in

northern Peru, had successfully preserved moral conduct, collective values, and public

order. Shining Path guerrillas’ proposal to replace what peasants viewed as an effective

and just correctional system with their own radical one was met with violent resistance in

these communities.

I hope that the comparative analysis that follows, in emphasizing the lived

experiences and cultural perceptions of subaltern actors at the local level, will contribute

to our understanding of why some indigenous peasants initially supported the Shining

Path insurgency while others violently rejected it. This approach can be useful not only

in deepening our comprehension of the logic of collective action in the Andes, but also in

a broader humanistic sense in terms of exploring the historical linkages between culture,

power, and violence.

Chapter One: Butchers, Killers, and Cattle Stealers

Internal Conflict and Resolution

Quispillacctino Asunción Llalli had some explaining to do. The year was 1973,

and two of his neighbors had just reported the theft of five llamas from their corral.

Authorities found the hides of the slaughtered llamas in the home of a villager who

claimed to have gotten them from Llalli. When the investigators got to Llalli’s home,

they found the llama meat. This did not surprise the victims, who went on record stating

that Llalli “is a delinquent [es persona acostumbrada] and…well-known abigeo

[livestock thief].”1 Rather than deny the charges, Llalli, an illiterate indígena (indigenous

person) in his early thirties, confessed to the crime, attributing his actions to his “poverty”

and his inebriation. He said that since about 6 o’clock on the evening of 5 April, he had

been drifting from store to store in the Chuschi plaza consuming alcoholic beverages, so

that by the time he returned to Quispillaccta, he was good and drunk. He said he had

found three llamas wandering the streets near his home, refuting his accusers’ claim that

there had been five llamas in all, and that they had been locked up in a corral. Llalli said

that he then took the animals to an unpopulated area about a kilometer outside of the

village. Llalli slaughtered his prey and took all the meat back to his house, but he still did

not know what to do with the hides, so at around 3 or 4 in the morning he gave them to

1 ARA, CSJ-JP. Cangallo, Leg. 101, Exp. 28, “Instrucción contra Asunción Llalli por el delito de abigeato,” Denuncia de Bernabé Núñez y Carlos Galindo contra Asunción Llalli (13 April 1973).

compoblano Manuel Pacotaipe. Llalli and his family ate well that day, so well that they

still had enough carcass left over to sell two llama heads and some meat to a group of forasteros (travelers, outsiders) who happened to be passing through the village.2 Llalli might have gotten away with it were it not for investigators discovering the llama hides in

Pacotaipe’s possession. Even so, he only served a four month prison sentence for the crime.3

In other cases, it seemed as if the law had been on Llalli’s side. Llalli denounced

chuschino authority Francisco Vilca before the penal court in 1971. Vilca was one of the

first indigenous comuneros to break the race barrier of the district authority structure after

the 1968 Agrarian Reform, a leader seen as legitimate in the eyes of many indigenous

comuneros.4 Yet Llalli claimed that on three separate occasions the authority had arbitrarily thrown him into the calabozo, the village holding cell. The first incident took place around August of 1970 when Lieutenant Governor Vilca accused him of stealing a radio and batteries from a local school teacher. Vilca locked him in the calabozo for forty-eight hours and drafted a document stating that Llalli was the author of the crime.

He did all this, Llalli added, “without having conducted any investigation or verification about the alleged act.”5 The second violation occurred months later, when Vilca and

Governor Alejandro Retamozo walked into his home unannounced one December

2 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 101, Exp. 28, Instructiva del inculpado Asunción Llalli (10 April 1973).

3 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 101, Exp. 28, Sentencia en la instrucción contra Asunción Llalli (14 June 1973).

4 Interview with Fulgencio Makta [pseud.], Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

5 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 77, Exp. 246, Denuncia ante el Juez Instructor contra el Teniente Gobernador de Chuschi (22 February 1971).

afternoon, detained him “with lively force” and held him in custody overnight. The

authorities woke him up the following morning and without so much as giving him a

meal ordered him to work for a contractor who was installing a mill at the point marked

Suyupampa. “[T]hey declared that the job was for the public good and that I needed to contribute my personal labor,” Llalli recollected. When his obligatory shift ended, the

officials obliged him to guide a Civil Guard officer to the nearby district of Totos. “[A]s

a result,” Llalli lamented, “the next day I had to use the 10 soles’ payment that the

aforementioned Corporal gave me for my [return] trip.”6 The final infraction took place

on 3 February 1971, when Vilca and the authority detained him once again for his alleged

robbery of the teacher’s radio. Llalli remained imprisoned until 5 o’clock the following

evening, whereupon Vilca proposed that he pay a fine of 7,600 soles to cover the cost of

the stolen radio. “Naturally, I rejected his proposal outright,” Llalli continued, “which

only further stimulated Vilca’s animosity towards me.” Upon being released a third time,

Llalli finally reported the Lieutenant Governor’s misdeeds to the Justice of the Peace.7

The case went to trial, and the court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, sentencing Vilca to one month’s prison and ordering him to pay Llalli 300 soles for civil reparation.8 Here, we

have a case in which a known cattle rustler won a court case against a locally respected

indigenous authority who had attempted to bring him to justice.

6 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 77, Exp. 246, Denuncia ante el Juez Instructor contra el Teniente Gobernador de Chuschi (22 February 1971).

7 Ibid.

8 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 77, Exp. 246, Sentencia en la instructiva contra Francisco Vilca por los delitos contra la libertad individual i abuso de autoridad (Circa 1971).

This chapter explores the sources of conflict between indigenous villagers in

Chuschi and Huaychao. As we will see, indigenous peasants from both communities

held similar views when it came to condemning social trespasses such as abigeato

(livestock theft), domestic impropriety (incest, adultery, spousal abuse, and the

abandonment of paternal duties), and the behavior that Samuel L. Popkin has termed

“free-riding”—that is, when individuals neglect their implicit duties towards the

collective good “because they believe they will receive the gain or security even if they

do not participate.”9 Indigenous campesinos from these two communities seemed willing

to tolerate their neighbors’ occasional slippages with respect to these moral

transgressions provided that they made a concerted effort to correct these behaviors, for it

was the delinquents like Asunción Llalli who threatened the public order of the

community. Where Chuschi and Huaychao’s histories diverge is in the extent to which

local systems of justice curbed this degenerate behavior. In Chuschi and neighboring

Quispillaccta, we find the same individuals committing one or more of these major

infractions throughout most of their adult life—and some even before that. This was a

direct consequence of a breakdown in the local administration of justice in the district.

Not only did the customary law of the varayoqs, the indigenous authorities of the

traditional civil-religious prestige hierarchy, fail to curb these individuals’ behavior but

so did the penal system of the Peruvian state. Asunción Llalli’s case is exemplary, for

even though he was sentenced to prison for livestock theft he only served four months,

which in the eyes of the local peasantry was both insufficient and ineffective in correcting

9 Popkin, The Rational Peasant, 25.

his “delinquency.” As we will see below, however, even a four month sentence was

unusual for moral deviants like Llalli—most never served any jail time. Men like Llalli

were not unlike the peasant “bandits” described by Eric Hobsbawm, men who “resist

obedience, are outside the range of [institutional] power, are potential exercisers of power

themselves [.]”10 Like Hobsbawm’s bandits, men like Llalli were local power holders,

but instead of stemming from class, race, or political authority, their power derived from

their ability to elude justice. Yet the Hobsbawmian terms of “bandit” or “social bandit”

do not adequetly describe this category of individuals. “The point about social bandits,”

Hobsbawm states, “is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within the peasant society, and are considered by their people

as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation,

and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported.”11 It is here where the men

described in this chapter differ from bandits. First, their encroachments were not

necessarily considered criminal in the eyes of the state or elite; there were no legal

sanctions against adultery or free-riding, for example. Secondly, and indeed because of

this first point, these men did not have the support of their fellow villagers. Quite the

contrary. Men like Asunción Llalli were considered as social outcasts within their

communities precisely because their fellow villagers considered their behavior immoral,

reprehensible, and threatening to public order. The justice they eluded was not only that of the state but also that of the traditional peasant community. The power they wielded was not socially righteous and admirable but illegitimate and detestable because it

10 Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (London: Abacus, 2000 [1969]), 12.

11 Ibid., 20.

stemmed from their disregard for the very social norms to which other comuneros were

held.

By contrast, customary justice in Huaychao, which was administered by local

authorities, had succeeded in dissuading individuals from habitually violating these

collective values. Thus, even though these authorities were sometimes at odds with their subalterns, huaychainos saw their power as legitimate and necessary because of their actual and symbolic role in safeguarding the community’s collective values and discouraging moral backsliding. The same could not be said for the Chuschi case, to which we now turn.

LOCAL DEVIANTS IN CHUSCHI AND QUISPILLACCTA

In this section, I will introduce the reader to a cast of local personalities who over

the years established a local reputation as moral backsliders. Although the figures are

several and the episodes are described in painstaking detail, I urge the reader to follow

along closely, for this is not a mere academic exercise. Rather, as we will see in chapter

five, each of the indigenous peasant “misfits” described here would become a key figure

in the civil war violence of the 1980s.

Not Your Everyday Cattle Rustlers: Adult Misfits

Asunción Llalli was just one of those key figures. His compoblano Teobaldo

Achallma was another. Achallma even looked like a delinquent, displaying a nasty scar

over the left side of his face. Three years after Llalli’s arrest, police in nearby Totos

arrested Achallma under abigeato charges. Yet unlike Llalli, Achallma denied the

allegations—even after his interrogators discovered that he was concealing tags from

stolen mules in his crotch. During the investigation that followed, authorities also found among Achallma’s household possessions three stolen documents: a permit to transport four bulls and a pair of stolen certificates of good conduct—one of the certificates belonged to none other than Asunción Llalli, who probably could have used it himself!12

Achallma assured the Juez Instructor (presiding judge) that this was the latest of a

series of unhappy coincidences dating back to 9 December 1975 when he came across a

small bag during a visit to Huamanga Province. When he opened up the bag, he found

twenty soles and a couple of leather mule tags. Achallma elected not to report the finding

for fear that “the Authorities would think that I had stolen them [and therefore]…throw

me in jail.” Instead, he decided to store the tags in his Quispillaccta home until mid April of the following year, when he removed them to ask a friend for advice on how to handle the situation. He still had the tags in his possession on 16 April when he and another friend named Teófilo Calderon went looking for work in the nearby district of Paras. On

their way there, they drove two mules into their camp site in the cave of a mountain a

couple of kilometers outside of the district of Totos. As they prepared to continue along

their journey, two men appeared at the mouth of the cave claiming that the Lieutenant

Governor of Totos had sent them to arrest Achallma and Calderon on charges of abigeato. Caught between their pursuers and the walls of the cave, the quispillacctinos made a futile attempt at an escape before succumbing to their captors. When Totos police brought Achallma in for questioning, he remembered that he was still carrying the

12 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 138, Exp. 37, “Instrucción contra Teobaldo Achallma por el delito de contra el patrimonio.” Instructiva del inculpado Teobaldo Achallma (6 May 1976).

leather mule tags he had found in Huamanga the previous year. Fearing that his interrogators would think he had ripped the tags from the two mules he and Calderon had

been steering, Achallma panicked, hiding them in his pants above the crotch.13

Achallma maintained that he also had a perfectly logical explanation for the

documents that investigators found in his home. He said that he had only borrowed the

two certificates of good conduct as models so that he could practice his penmanship; he

had never planned on using them for his personal benefit. And as for the permit to

transport four bulls, well that also required some explaining. Achallma said that he was

in the town of Incaraccay when he noticed a bag fall from a horse that was passing by.

When he picked up the bag, he found the permit inside along with another document and

some coca leaves. Since the owner had ridden off, Achallma pocketed his findings.14

Achallma understood that all this sounded suspicious given that he admitted having stolen livestock on two separate occasions over the past three years, but he insisted that this time was different: “I want to add that those were the only two times that

I’ve committed these acts and that I did them under the initiative of other people and not on my own accord[.]” Besides, he was desperate back then, motivated by “the poverty in which I live with my wife and my four children[.]”15 Achallma’s unconvincing alibi

13 ACSJA, JP Cangallo. Leg. 138, Exp. 37, Instructiva del inculpado Teobaldo Achallma (27 April 1976).

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

aside, the Fiscal (prosecutor) dropped the charges and the court closed the case

indefinitely!16

What led Teobaldo Achallma to his life of petty crime? To understand this, we

might go back to June of 1961, when Achallma walked into the office of the Subprefect

in Cangallo City to dispel a rumor that he was sleeping with his own mother. He said

that Quispillaccta authorities had even called his mother into a village chapel to reproach

her, before God and the patron-saints, for her alleged conduct. According to Achallma,

the officials at the chapel implied that the mother’s incest with her son had upset the

cosmos, precipitating a recent wave of hailstorms that had destroyed local harvests.

Achallma was aware of the social repercussions of these allegations, stating:

“Accusations of such a grave…and reprehensible conduct have caused profound alarm and repudiation against me within the village psyche…[M]ost of the villagers have believed these allegations and are constantly threatening our lives, considering us to be a

rare[,] strange[,] and offensive species.”17 Such accusations “have gravely injured our

honor and dignity,” Achallma continued, “and on the other hand our personal safety is

also in grave danger, given the fury [felt] by the majority of our compoblanos upon receiving word that the hailstorm was our fault[,] that it came as a punishment to ruin the

crops[.]”18 Now, Achallma had been married and divorced twice, and he believed that

his second wife was among the indígenas who had started the rumor. The district

16 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 138, Exp. 37, Sentencia en la instrucción contra Teobaldo Achallma (25 August 1977).

17 ARA, SC, Caja 17, Of. Chuschi, 1961, Queja de Teobaldo Achallma ante el Subprefecto (20 June 1961).

18 Ibid.

Governor confirmed that Achallma’s wife had left him eight years before the scandal erupted, leaving open the possibility of retribution on her part.19 Unfortunately, the

documentation does not go into detail about the nature of the breakup. Did the

campesina fabricate the rumor about her husband to settle a score? Or perhaps

Achallma’s Oedipus complex was what caused her to leave him in the first place. We simply do not know.

What we do know is that Achallma had his share of marital problems. Achallma

remarried a quispillacctina named Teresa Ccallocunto in February 1965. By March,

Ccallocunto had filed a complaint against one of Achallma’s former lovers. Ccallocunto

contended that the woman in question had forced herself into the newlyweds’ home and

refused to leave, proclaiming that she was Achallma’s rightful partner since he had

fathered her child.20 This may have been what led Ccallocunto to move back in with her

parents seven months later. After a failed attempt to demand his wife’s return—

Ccallocunto’s family chased him away from their home violently—a frustrated Achallma

informed local authorities of his wife’s “poor conduct” and demanded that they take

immediate action to force her to return. When this failed, he took his complaint to the

provincial Subprefect.21 Whether she did so under her own initiative or because the

provincial authority ordered her to, Teresa Ccallocunto eventually moved back in with

her husband. Unfortunately, Teresa now had to contend with Achallma’s first wife—not

19 ARA, SC, Caja 17, Of. Chuschi, 1961, Informe del gobernador de Chuschi al Subprefecto (29 June 1961).

20 ARA, SC, Queja de Teresa Ccallocunto ante el Subprefecto (24 March 1965).

21 ARA, SC, Petición de Teobaldo Achallma ante el Subprefecto (10 October 1966).

the one who accused him of incest, and not the woman who said he had fathered her

child, but another local named Martina Núñez from whom he had been separated for

eighteen years. Achallma complained to the Subprefect that Núñez and friend Felipa

Cisneros had been directing “bad words [palabras soeces]” towards him and his wife.

While he elected not to repeat these words, they seemed to have had an effect on his wife,

who was now considering leaving him again. To discredit his ex-wife, Achallma

suggested that she was “a loose woman [una mujer de vida alegre] who engages in

dishonest acts [and] who has born six children from different people[.]”22 Núñez responded with an equally gendered charge, reminding the Subprefect that one of those children was Achallma’s and that he had long since abandoned his paternal duties as the boy’s father: “[Achallma] has neither taken care of nor clothed nor protected [his] son in any way.” Núñez maintained that all she had done was remind Achallma of his obligation to feed his son.23

The women in Achallma’s life were not the only quispillacctinos who felt that he

had abandoned his responsibilities. In August 1975, twenty-four peasant leaders and

villagers from his barrio of Catalinayoq notified the Subprefect that Teobaldo Achallma

had ignored his “duties as a comunero” in at least three ways. First, he neglected to

contribute the seventy soles per year that each comunero was expected to contribute to

Quispillaccta’s communal fund. Second, he chose not to participate in village faenas, the

collective public works projects which included the maintenance of irrigation ditches and

22 ARA, SC, Caja 30, Of. Chuschi, 1967, Solicitud de garantías de Teobaldo Achallma ante el Subprefecto (29 May 1967).

23 ARA, SC, Caja 30, Of. Chuschi, 1967, Manifestación de Martina Núñez y Felipe Cisneros ante el Subprefecto (31 July 1967).

communal pasture lands and the construction of buildings. Finally, Achallma had illicitly

appropriated eighteen hectares of communal lands in addition to several of his

compoblanos’ private plots.24 Increasingly, then, Achallma’s neighbors came to regard

him as a free-rider who put personal profit and security over that of the collective.

Whether the scarfaced quispillacctino turned to a life of petty crime and delinquency in

the 1970s in spite of his compoblanos’ attitudes or because of them remains a mystery.

Simply put, local comuneros viewed Teobaldo Achallma as a degenerate. His

long history of livestock theft was only the beginning of his problems in the eyes of his

neighbors. If his court and police testimonies are any indication, he was also a chronic

liar. Perhaps his futile attempt to hide stolen mule tags inside his pants is an

understandable reaction for someone caught stealing, but his insistence on fabricating

unconvincing stories about “finding” them and other goods throughout the countryside

implies a certain unwillingness to take responsibility for his actions. This, together with

the stolen and forged certificates of conduct found in his home, paints the picture of a

man willing to lie, cheat, and steal at the expense of his fellow villagers for his own

benefit. This was not the only time that he had placed his own interests above that of

the collective. His unwillingness to participate in communal works projects and pay

comunero fees signaled to some that he was also a free-rider, a man who willingly

shunned the implicit duties of a comunero yet was happy to reap the benefits of

communal membership. To quispillacctinos, this moral deviancy and disregard for the

24 ARA, SC, Caja 35, Of. Chuschi, 1875, Denuncia contra Teobaldo Achallma (24 August 1975).

collective posed as much of a threat to the local cosmological order as it did to the moral

and social one, precipitating droughts and other natural disasters.25

The same could be said of Achallma’s domestic conduct. As we have seen,

comuneros and authorities blamed natural disasters and crop failures on Achallma’s

alleged incest. As Billie Jean Isbell’s chuschino informants explained to her in the 1970s, the stigma of incest went beyond this:

There are degrees of incest, with sexual acts between members of a nuclear family as the most contemptuous and those between minor compadres as less serious…Persons engaged in incestuous relations are condemned by God to a life of suffering and are compelled to wander at night in the bodily form of domestic animals such as dogs, pigs, or donkeys, wearing articles of clothing or with bells around their necks. If touched while in this form, the condemned ones are transformed back into human shape, and thereby reveal their identities.26

Achallma’s reputation as a partner and father also left something to be desired. Having been married and divorced more than once and having had several more unsuccessful relationships, Achallma was a prototypical mujeriégo, a “womanizer,” and one who scoffed at his patriarchal duties towards his lovers and children.

Nor was Achallma the only one who had earned a reputation as a local misfit. As one neighbor told authorities in 1959, indigenous quispillacctino Amancio Rejas

Pacotaipe had been involved in at least three local robberies by the time he was nineteen.

First, he had stolen jewelry from La Virgen Rosario, the patron-saint of the Ccehuilla chapel. When the Ecónomo (accountant) of the church found out about the theft, he

25 Valeriano Mendoza Machaca, “Quispillaccta: Cosmovisión del clima y su importancia en la actividad agropecuaria” (Thesis in Anthropology, UNSCH, 1998), 96.

26 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 135.

ordered Rejas to put the jewels back on the effigy, which was the only reason that the crime had not been reported.27 Second, Rejas had stolen from the home of the shepherd of the Quispillaccta cofradía (religious confraternity), another crime that went

unpunished. Finally, Rejas had robbed eighty soles from quispillacctino Santiago Núñez,

having since arranged to settle the matter out of court.28 Thus, even though Amancio

Rejas entered 1959 with no criminal record, he already possessed many of the traits of a deviant. Even if he was not yet a thief, he probably looked the part, what with his budding beard and the vertical scar on his forehead, just above his right eye. The fact that he could pass for mestizo due to his unusually light complexion may also have hurt his chances of being accepted by other indigenous comuneros.29

Perhaps this was all the evidence Antonio Galindo needed when he brought robbery charges against the nineteen-year-old in 1959. The previous year, Galindo had been appointed shepherd of the animals owned by Quispillaccta’s cofradía. Since then,

he had been living in the punas (the highest habitable ecological niche) of Ccehuilla,

where he attended to the animals. Rejas kept his own herd about a block away from

27 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Denuncia de Antonio Galindo Núñez ante el Juez Instructor (22 April 1959).

28 Ibid.

29 Rejas Pacotaipe’s physical features are described in several Cangallo court records of the Archivo Regional de Ayacucho (ARA). Only once is he described as a “light-colored” mestizo. See ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, “Instrucción contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe por el delito contra el patrimonio,” Instrucctiva de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (25 April 1959). In later cases, he is described as an indígena. See, for example, ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, “Instrucción contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe y Felipe Aycha por el delito de robo de ganado,” Instructiva de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (3 April 1976); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo Leg. 132, Exp. 70, “Instrucción contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe y otros por el delito de contra el patrimonio,” Instructiva de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (11 November 1975). The fact that Rejas Pacotaipe passed for mestizo the first time he was the subject of a criminal investigation—before he had a criminal record—and then indígena in each of the subsequent cases—after he had established himself as a deviant—is suggestive of the way in which Peruvian state officials racialized crime in the highlands.

Galindo’s home. Galindo told the judge that he had made the mistake of selling a young

bull in the presence of Rejas, who stood by as he walked away from the deal with 900

soles in cash. Not long after the transaction, in August 1958, Galindo locked up his home

and went into the village to attend to some trivial matters while his wife grazed their

sheep. Galindo returned only to find the lock on his door jimmied and the 900 soles from

the transaction missing. “Given that [Rejas] is a person with a [criminal] past who is

accustomed to committing robberies of the nature of the one I’m condemning,” Galindo

explained to the justice, “my suspicions fell squarely on him.”30 Rejas sustained

Galindo’s intuitions when shortly after the robbery he began spending large sums of

money on aguardiente around the village. At one point, Galindo complained, Rejas paid

for a bottle of the cane liquor with a 100 soles bill. When the teller could not produce

enough change for the transaction, Rejas took his drink and instructed the teller to return

his change on a later occasion, as if leaving behind such a large bill “didn’t bother him

any.”31 Rejas’s behavior convinced Galindo of his guilt, prompting him to report the

robbery to Chuschi’s Justice of the Peace. The judge detained Rejas who, according to

Galindo, confessed to the crime and secured his release after repaying him half of the stolen money.32

When the case was brought to trial, Amancio Rejas denied having stolen from his

neighbor, saying that he was attending to his fields inside the village at the time that the

30 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Denuncia de Antonio Galindo Núñez ante el Juez Instructor (13 April 1959).

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

alleged robbery took place, although he conceded that the notion of a farmer with a daily

income of about a sol leaving a hundred soles bill for a bottle of cane liquor merited an

explanation. Contrary to what Galindo testified, however, Rejas claimed that he had

borrowed the money from his mother, who had been stashing some large bills in a small cloth inside her home. He added that the following day he returned to the store with exact change and returned his mother’s savings. Before signing off on the deposition,

Rejas clarified that the fact that members of his extended family had come up with the

450 soles in bail money was in no way an admission of guilt on his part.33

Rejas produced three witnesses who confirmed his alibi. Each of these witnesses

claimed that after working with Rejas in the fields that day, Rejas had gotten plenty

drunk.34 For his part, Antonio Galindo pleaded with the judge to throw out these three testimonies, arguing that two of the three witnesses were his personal enemies who had vowed to bring him down. One of these men even formed “part of the band of thieves for which the accused Agripino Amancio Rejas Pacotaype [sic] is a member.” The third

witness, José Tomaylla, was simply biased in that he had served as Rejas’s padrino

(godfather) during his Catholic wedding. Galindo detailed the sanctity of this fictive

kinship in the Andes: “[T]his relationship is most respected by this religion, especially in

villages like Quispillaccta; the padrino de matrimonio [wedding godfather] is considered

[a godson’s] second father, next to his own parents; at the same time the padrino holds

the same affection for his godchildren and feels as if they are his own children.—As

33 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Instructiva de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (21 April 1959).

34 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Declaración de Pablo Núnez (30 April 1959); Declaración de José Tomaylla (30 April 1959); Declaración de Miguel Huamaní (30 April 1959).

such, José Tomaylla has an interest in clearing his accused godson of all charges.”35

Galindo’s pleas did not produce the desired results, and the judge eventually cleared

Amancio Rejas of all charges.36

Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe managed to keep his name out of the Cangallo court record for the next decade. Perhaps he learned his lesson from his brush with the law and decided to earn an honest living; or maybe he continued to negotiate his way out of trouble without involving the authorities, as Galindo suggested he had done in the past.

Whatever the case, his name reappeared with a flurry of cases in the 1970s.

Tomás Núñez explained to a Cangallo judge that he and his family were fast asleep in their choza (humble abode) in the hills of Quispillaccta at midnight on 8 March

1973 when Rejas appeared at his doorstep with friend Bernabé Núñez, an indígena known locally as “Ccello” (“Yellow”), presumably due to his copper complexion.37 The nightriders requested some aguardiente, to which Núñez obliged, pouring his uninvited guests half a bottle of the cane liquor. As they drank, Amancio and Bernabé warned

Tomás that a local named Santos Pacotaipe would soon be accusing the three of them of stealing horses from campesina Melchora Núñez. Confident of his own innocence,

Tomás gullibly accompanied the two men to the location where the alleged robbery took place to confront his accusers. Once they got there, though, Amancio and Bernabé

35 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Solicitud de Antonio Galindo ante el Juez Instructor (2 May 1959).

36 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1200, Exp. 12, Sentencia del Juez Instructor en el caso seguido contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (10 May 1962).

37 We learn of Núñez’s nickname, race, and skin color, described as “cobrizo,” in a subsequent, unrelated criminal investigation. See ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, N. 69, “Instrucción contra Bernabé Conde y Antonio Ccallocunto Mejía por el delito de apropriación ilícita,” Instructiva de Bernabé Núñez (31 October 1975).

Ccello turned on him, telling Santos Pacotaipe that Tomás alone had committed the

crime. When Tomás protested, the three men began hitting and kicking him. Melchora

Núñez, the very woman whose horses had reportedly been stolen, heard the ruckus and

came outside. Tomás told the judge that Melchora must have known he was innocent, for

she quickly ran out to his defense. Unfortunately, this did not deter his attackers, who submitted her to punches as well. It was only after more neighbors got involved to break up the fight that the attack ended.38

The judge ruled against Tomás and set Amancio Rejas and company free.39

Because of the relatively quick verdict, it is unclear whether Tomás actually stole

Melchora Núñez’s horses; the campesina never testified in the case. All we have are the depositions of Amancio, Santos, and Bernabé Ccello, who insisted that Tomás had indeed stolen the animals.40 I would suggest that Amancio and Bernabé stole the horses in

question and pinned the crime on Tomás once they discovered that Santos Núñez was

leading an investigation. If this hypothesis seems unsubstantiated at this point, it should

become more convincing as we explore Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe’s character and track

record over the ensuing years.

A little over a month after the incident with Tomás Núñez, Roberto Núñez filed a

similar complaint against Amancio. Roberto said that Amancio approached him one day,

38 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 102, Exp. 44, “Instructiva Contra Santos Pacotaipe, Fernando (Bernabé) Núñez, y Amancio Rejas Pacotaype por el delito de calumnia, difamación y injuria,” Denuncia de Tomás Núñez ante el Juez Instructor (circa 15 June 1973).

39 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 102, Exp. 44, Sentencia en el caso contra Santos Pacotaipe, Fernando (Bernabé) Núñez, y Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (27 November 1973).

40 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 102, Exp. 44, Preventiva de Santos Pacotaipe, Fernando (Bernabé) Núñez, y Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (15 June 1973).

accompanied by Quispillaccta’s Justice of the Peace, and forced him to sign a legal

document. Now, Roberto had received enough primary school education to know how to

sign his name, but he by no means considered himself literate, much less capable of

understanding the language of a legal text written in Spanish. Nevertheless, Roberto

signed the document, admitting that he felt “threatened” by Amancio and the judge.

After Roberto signed the text, Amancio explained to him that he had just admitted to

stealing five of his horses and ordered the justice to place him under arrest. Not only was

he innocent of the charges that Amancio Rejas had brought against him, Roberto told the

Juez Instructor, but he never even knew that Rejas owned five horses. Moreover,

Roberto claimed to have been selling alpaca wool in the nearby town of Niñobamba on the day that Rejas supposedly lost the animals, as indicated on the certificate he obtained from a Niñobamba political authority.41 Yet, as was the case with Tomás Núñez, the judge ruled in favor of Amancio Rejas.

Amancio’s neighbors might have tolerated his bullying of suspected abigeos

were it not for the fact that he himself had a reputation of being a livestock rustler. So

notorious was Rejas’s reputation as an abigeo that Quispillaccta authorities held a special

assembly in May 1975 to address his conduct. Three separate villagers maintained that

Rejas had stolen a bull from Basilio Galindo in the Chuschi barrio (neighborhood) of

Uchuirre two months prior, only to reach an agreement with the local Justice of the Peace

so that the charges would be dropped. One of these neighbors went as far as to suggest

that Rejas had threatened to kill him. Another charged that Rejas had sold his coworker

41 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 105, Exp. 75, “Instructiva contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe por el delito de calumnia y difamación (circa May 1973).

cattle that he had stolen from quispillacctino Carlos Galindo. Even Bernabé “Ccello”

Núñez spoke out against his one-time companion. While we cannot isolate the cause of

the former mates’ falling-out, the unique language of Ccello’s denunciation may give us

some clues: “…Amancio Rejas declares that all the women in [the barrio of] Tuco are

his[,] moreover[,] all the inhabitants of Tuco know that this Subject is an adulterer [and]

abigeo.” Had a woman come between the two mates, or did Rejas’s philandering breach

Ccello’s moral standard? Whatever the case, the assembly participants resolved to solicit

both the provincial Fiscal and the President of the National Council of Justice in Lima

“so that [they] take drastic measures and [make an] example of this wrongdoer

[maleante][,] for the crimes he’s committed are multiple, moreover he doesn’t fulfill his

duties as a comunero.”42

Five months later, Bernabé Ccello Núñez joined with quispillacctinos Antonio

Ccallocunto and Cayetana Casavilca to bring multiple charges of cattle rustling against

Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe. Casavilca informed the Juez Instructor that she had suffered

the loss of six heads of cattle from her Tuco corral on 13 February. The next day, she

organized a search party of “a number of people” who traced the footprints towards the

town of Niñobamba. At around 5 o’clock in the evening, members of the investigative

committee spotted the figures of three men, two on horseback and another afoot, steering

her cattle. The members of the search party gave chase and the suspects scattered, letting

loose the cattle. The pursuers caught up to the man on foot, whom they quickly identified

as Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe. Rejas could only produce four of the cows, promising to

42 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 70, “Instrucción contra Amancio Rejas y otros por el delito de contra el patrimonio,” Copia del LAQ (24 May 1975).

repay Casavilca for the remaining two. This was not the first time that Rejas had stolen

livestock from her, Casavilca added, explaining that he had previously stolen llamas from

her on four separate occasions. She said that she had decided to ignore Rejas’s previous

robberies since the value of the individual llamas was not worth the hassle of reporting

each case. This time, however things were different. “[I] cannot allow[,] Señor Juez, that

they [sic] get away with taking my animals,” she explained, for it was clear to her that

Amancio Rejas had become one of Quispillaccta’s most “vindictive thieves,” like so

many others who were “committed to a life of robbery [avesados en la ratería].”43

Similarly, Ccallocunto stated that he had lost a cow and a bull from his stable in

Quispillaccta on 8 September. He alleged that Rejas, a relative who would have had plenty of opportunity to “study how my door locks worked,” had stolen “what little cows

I own [mis únicas vaquitas,] which I [depended on] to take care of my little children and wife[.]”44 As Bernabé Ccello stated, on 16 September he too lost twenty llamas from his stable.45 Both Ccallocunto and Ccello Núñez suspected Amancio Rejas as the author of

the crimes, and they both claimed to have obtained a written confession signed by

Amancio Rejas before the Justice of the Peace. Before naming their witnesses and

submitting the deposition, the three plaintiffs made one final plea: “Inasmuch as the

defendant Amancio Rejas Pacotaype [sic], is a man accustomed and pruntuario [?], with

43 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 70, Denuncia ante el Juez Instructor contra Amancio Rejas y Antonio Gamboa (30 October 1975).

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

a heavy [criminal] record and an ex-convict for various crimes, we implore you to punish

him in the most exemplary manner[.]”46

Amancio Rejas remembered things quite differently. Before his accusers

submitted the above complaint, Rejas had already appeared before the office of the

Subprefect in Cangallo City to record his side of the story. He alleged that on 24

September, Ccallocunto, Núñez, and three of their neighbors had captured him “without

the authorization of a single authority,” and accused him of stealing their livestock. The

men then brought Rejas to Ayacucho City, where they held him prisoner in a room

owned by one of his captors until the following day, at which point they escorted him back to Quispillaccta and placed him in holding at Ccello’s residence. It was there, Rejas informed the Subprefect, that his captors began to “torture” him, “mistreating me cruelly…[and] injuring my entire body[.]” The following morning, Rejas continued, his subjugators took him to Niñobamba, ordering him by way of kicks and punches to recover the stolen animals. His captors kept him in their custody until finally handing him over to police on 30 September. Rejas explained that his subjugators had threatened

to kill him lest he sign a document confessing to the crimes. He did so reluctantly even

though he was illiterate and did not understand its content.47

Rejas Pacotaipe returned from Cangallo City only to find twenty-five llamas and

five cows missing from his own corral. He immediately suspected that Ccello and

Ccallocunto had taken advantage of his absence to steal the animals, and he so informed

46 Ibid.

47 ARA, SC, Caja 35, Varias Solicitudes, 1975, Queja de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe ante el Subprefecto (8 October 1975).

the Civil Guard of Morochucos. Without going into detail, Rejas also alleged that the

two had “mistreated” his daughter in the process, an act which precipitated her running

away from home.48 Ccello ignored this last accusation, but he did admit that he and

Ccallocunto had taken the animals, which they believed to be theirs to begin with.49

Quispillaccta authorities quickly produced certificates of conduct for both

Ccallocunto and Núñez. The certificates verified that each was an “able Comunero and

campesino of Quispillaccta” and an “upstanding and honorable person who owns a small

stock of cattle and sheep and that the certified person has no documented history of

negative [conduct] in this locality[.]”50 The language of these documents contrasted

greatly with a certificate they had compiled a month earlier regarding Amancio Rejas:

The inscribed Authorities of the Village of Quispillaccta[,] Annex of the District of Chuschi, of the Province of Cangallo of the Department of Ayacucho. CERTIFY: That a comunero from this village named Amanción [sic] Rejas Pacotaype [sic], has become a Deviant [Flagilador] in numerous livestock robberies against this town’s [livestock] owners[.]51

Amancio Rejas’s accusers must have felt that that they had the case locked up

when they reported to a judge in late 1975 that a policeman of the Civil Guard had found

48 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 69, “Instrucción contra Bernabé Núñez y Antonio Ccallocunto por el delito de apropiación ilícita,” Manifestación de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (29 October 1975).

49 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 69, Manifestación de Bernabé Núñez (29 October 1975); Instructiva de Bernabé Núñez (31 October 1975).

50 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 69, Certificado de conducta de Bernabé Núñez (27 October 1975); Certificado de conducta de Antonio Ccallocunto (27 October 1975).

51 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 70, Certificado de conducta de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (23 September 1975).

twenty-six stolen llamas and five cattle at his sister’s residence.52 Imagine their surprise

when the verdict came back the following year clearing Rejas of all charges.53

Amancio Rejas’s life of delinquency reveals many of the same social and moral

infractions for which his compoblano Teobaldo Achallma stood accused. We learned, for

example, that he had established somewhat of a local reputation as a womanizer—and not

just any womanizer, but one who flaunted his adultery. His disrespect for women went beyond sexuality, for he had even stood accused of physically attacking compoblana

Melchora Núñez when the latter got involved in an altercation between him and Tomás

Núñez. Rejas’s taste for alcohol probably did not help his reputation, and as we have

seen, many of his social transgressions were precipitated by heavy bouts of drinking. We

also saw an accusation that he was a free-rider who neglected his communal duties. Most

importantly, though, Rejas was a well-known thief. To be sure, other peasants had

resorted to robbery on occasion. However, Rejas was unique. For starters, neighbors

accused him of stealing religious paraphernalia, insinuating that he had no respect for the

sanctity of religious artifacts or the symbolic solidarity of the community.54 Moreover,

the descriptions that Rejas’s neighbors gave of him—as “vindictive,” “accustomed,” and

“committed” to a life of robbery, and as belonging to a “band of thieves,”—suggested

that he was not just someone who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather,

he was someone who had professionalized the crime, a sort of career criminal. Nor did

52 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 70, Instructiva de Cayetana Casavilca y Antonio Ccallocunto (19 December 1975).

53 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 70, Sentencia en el juzgado seguida contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe y otros (3 August 1976).

54 See chapter three for more on the symbolic importance of religious icons within the district.

he allow for competition when it came to his “profession.” As we have seen, Rejas did

not hesitate to intimidate and harm locals whom he suspected of engaging in petty theft.

The testimonies that comuneros gave me and my research assistants Alberto and

Julián during our visit to Chuschi in 2007 confirmed these observations. During a

conversation with sixty-eight-year-old quispillacctino Víctor Núñez, we asked which

locals had the biggest reputation as cattle rustlers. “Ah, Rejas,” tayta (Mr., sir) Víctor

mused. “Amancio?” I asked. I could tell by the surprised look on tayta Víctor’s face that

he had not expected me to know to whom he was referring. “Yes, that’s the one. Was he

your friend or something?” he teased with a snicker, insinuating that I must have been

part of the cattle-rustling crowd. “That guy would steal from right under your nose and

then go home and beat his wife,” the elder continued,

That guy would steal from his own brother, and from his wife’s sister, too. …He drank a lot, too. He’d go around the streets [drunk] acting all tough, saying, ‘Whose going to stop me? Not anyone from this town.’…He was always picking fights, getting into arguments, because when the comuneros would drink they would challenge him, saying, ‘you’re an abigeo!’ And that would make him angry [se ponía macho], and people were scared of him [when he was angry]. …Everyone was afraid of him because everyone had a few animals [that he could potentially steal]. If someone was out in the fields, [Rejas] would say, ‘Alright, where are all his livestock? How many cows does he have, how many sheep?’ And then he’d go and steal them.

Tayta Víctor went on to tell us that Rejas was rumored to rape the women he stole from:

“He would steal their cows and then come back to the woman’s home and abuse her,

raping the cow’s owner. …He would just take the cow up into the hills…come back and

rape her.” When we pressed for a specific case in which this was rumored to have

occurred, tayta Víctor had little trouble coming up with one, but I will spare the reader

the details out of respect for the victim. What is important to note, though, is that tayta

Víctor could not recall any instances in which Rejas was brought to justice for his violations.55 Thus, part of Rejas’s power derived not only from his monopoly over theft,

but also from his monopoly over justice, for while he made sure that others did not get

away with their crimes, he always seemed to get away with his. This, of course, was a

direct challenge to the hegemony of indigenous authorities, who traditionally

administered justice within the communities. As mentioned above, not even their

certificates of misconduct against Rejas could persuade state authorities to lock him away.

In fact, the only case in which Rejas served jail time for cattle rustling occurred outside of the district. In March 1975, about half a year before Rejas’s compoblanos brought the above abigeato charges against him, Totos native Daría Enciso León reported that someone had made off with three cows from her corral in the punas above the district on the night of 3 February.56 Enciso told the Juez Instructor that in the days that

followed, she had proceeded to search for her lost animals “from puna to puna.” After

several days of fruitless searching had passed, Enciso attended the regional market in

Rumichaca, only to find Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe selling them as his own. Enciso

immediately went to the Justice of the Peace of Totos and requested that Pacotaipe be

brought in for questioning.57 With their spouses and the justice as witnesses, Rejas and

55 Interview with Víctor Núñez, Chuschi (27 July 2007).

56 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, “Instrucción contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe y Felipe Aycha,” Denuncia ante el Juez de Paz de Totos contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (31 March 1975).

57 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Denuncia de Daría Enciso ante el Juez Instructor (3 April 1975).

Enciso signed an accord in which Rejas confessed to the crime and agreed to compensate

Enciso for her losses.58 By the time the case got to trial, however, Rejas had altered his

story. He explained that he was with his wife, Dámasa, one early February evening when her cousin, a chuschino named Felipe Aycha,59 appeared at their Tuco choza with three

heads of cattle. Aycha told Rejas that he was in a hurry and that he would pay him

fifteen soles to help him steer the beasts to Niñobamba, where he had made plans to sell them to a local merchant. Rejas agreed, and the two left without delay, remaining in

Niñobamba overnight. Rejas returned to Quispillaccta alone the following morning,

having never given the episode much thought since Aycha was a butcher and cattle

tradesman. Rejas added that it was only after authorities detained him and brought him in

for questioning that he learned that the cattle in question had been obtained illicitly.60

Other than being about fifteen years older, clean shaven, and from Chuschi, butcher Felipe Aycha had a good deal in common with Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe. Like

Rejas, he too could pass for mestizo due to his “copper” skin tone.61 Like Rejas, Aycha

had a scar on his face, but his covered his left cheekbone. Aycha, like Rejas, drank and

chewed coca leaf regularly, and like Rejas, he had a checkered past.62 When the judge in

the above case asked Aycha if he had any prior convictions, he replied that he only had

58 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Acta de conciliación entre Amancio Rejas, Daría Enciso, y esposos (18 February 1975).

59 This is a pseudonym.

60 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Manifestación de Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (1 April 1975); Insructiva del inculpado Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe (3 April 1975).

61 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Instructiva del inculpado Felipe Aycha [pseud.] (18July 1975). See chapter two for a discussion of the fluidity of racial identity in Chuschi.

62 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Instructiva del inculpado Felipe Aycha (18July 1975).

one: he had served two and a half years for the murder of three quispillacctinos.63 By his own admission, then, Felipe Aycha was a butcher and a killer, but he insisted that he was no cattle stealer. While he confirmed having paid Amancio Rejas fifteen soles for his assistance in steering some cattle to Niñobamba, he said that he had purchased the animals legally from a Huaracco local. Aycha appended that he was not surprised by

Rejas’s insinuation that he had stolen the cattle, dismissing it as retribution for his role in the assassination of Rejas’s quispillacctino neighbors.64 This time, however, the court

sided against both Rejas and Aycha, sentencing them both to four months prison for the

crime of abigeato.65

This was not the first time Felipe Aycha had been suspected of livestock theft, nor

would it be the last. Chuschi’s titular judge Alfredo Palomino’s run-in with Aycha took place at around 11 o’clock on the night of 8 October 1968, as he and neighbor Santos

Mejía irrigated their chacras (farming lands). As he testified to the Fiscal, Mejía had gone to check on the status of one of the outlets near the cemetery when two strangers steering a black bull crossed his path. After confronting the men, Mejía determined that they were abigeos and hurried back to inform the justice. Mejía and Palomino caught up to the suspects and confiscated the bull overnight until they could identify its owner. The next morning, however, the suspects managed to recover the bull when Palomino was attending to his fields. When Palomino discovered this, he demanded that the suspects

63 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Instructiva del inculpado Felipe Aycha (18July 1975). This case is described in chapter three.

64 Ibid. For more on the rivalry between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, see chapter three.

65 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 125, Exp. 7, Sentencia en la instrucción contra Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe y Felipe Aycha (3 September 1976).

return the beast immediately. What he got instead was a skull and some raw hide.

Palomino detained the suspects and initiated an investigation in which several villagers confirmed seeing Aycha with the two men and the bull on the night in question.66 One of the suspects, a campesino named Vidal Chuchón, confirmed this story in his deposition, explaining that Aycha had contracted his services all around town, which included driving the bull to his residence on the night in question and slaughtering it the following morning. Chuchón did not care to speculate on whether Aycha had stolen the beast, focusing instead on how the butcher had treated his peones (laborers). For instance, after he had solicited Chuchón’s help in recovering the bull from holding and slaughtering it,

Aycha sent Chuchón to his quarters, “without having paid [me] any money or treating me to a single slab of meat for the job.”67 Chuchón’s description provides an image of Felipe

Aycha as a villager who did not appreciate the behavioral norms for reciprocal exchanges between comuneros.

A case involving abigeato earlier that year provides another example of the ways in which Aycha breached comuneros’ tacit codes of conduct. Emilio Quichca was grazing the cattle of his patrón (employer), mestizo Ernesto Jaime, in the punas above

Chuschi in late August when he noticed that three of the animals were missing. As Jaime articulated to the Juez Instructor, the mystery was solved when brothers Marino and

66 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 64, “Instructiva contra Felipe Aycha y otros por el delito de abigeato,” Informe del Juez Titular de Chuschi al Agente Fiscal de Cangallo (29 October 1968).

67 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 64, Instructiva del inculpado Vidal Chuchón (circa November 1968).

Juvencio Ochoa later attempted to trade the cattle with “the well-known abigeo” Aycha.68

When authorities brought Marino Ochoa in to testify in court, he once again focused on

Aycha’s inappropriate social conduct. Marino contended that even though Aycha was married to his sister, Marcelina, the two were not on friendly terms. The reason for this, he explained, was that Felipe “constantly abused” Marcelina, and Marino’s staunch defense of his sister had created “an irreconcilable enmity” between the brothers-in-law.

Given their turbulent history as in-laws, then, Marino rendered it unlikely that he would have had any dealings with Aycha.69 After denying the charges of cattle rustling, Aycha

confirmed Marino’s story. He told the judge that earlier that year he had had “an

exchange of words” with the Ochoa brothers with respect to his treatment of their sister.

Although he elected not to go into detail, Aycha stated that the mutual “resentment”

created by the spat was severe enough to preclude further socialization between them.70

This alibi was sufficient to exculpate the in-laws, for the court ruled in their favor.71

How long would the chuschino butcher stay out of trouble? For Ernesto Jaime, the answer to this question must have been ‘nine years,’ for that was how long it took the vecino (non-comunero resident)72 to reintroduce abigeato charges against Aycha. This

time, Jaime alleged, Aycha had teamed up with Bernardo Chipana, a migrant who had

spent a good deal of time living outside the village, and two locals with the surname

68 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 62, “Instrucción contra Ernesto Jaime y otros por el delito de abigeato y tentativa de homicidio,” Denuncia de Ernesto Jaime Miranda ante el Juez Instructor (circa December 1968).

69 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 62, Instructiva del inculpado Marino Ochoa (circa December 1968).

70 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 62, Instructiva del inculpado Felipe Aycha (circa December 1968).

71 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 62, Sentencia en la instrucción contra Felipe Aycha y otros (27 July 1970).

72 See chapter two for more on the distinction between vecinos and comuneros.

Allcca.73 Jaime asserted that during the first week of 1979 the men in question plucked a

swine from his corral, a mere block from his house. Maybe Jaime felt that the rustlers

were picking on him, for he lamented that a week later they were at it again, this time

stealing a pair of horses from his other corral. Jaime gave five reasons to suspect that

Aycha, Chipana, and the two Allccas had committed the crimes. First, the foursome

made up “a gang [cuadrilla] of Chuschi abigeos” who all lived in Aycha’s residence and

had criminal records. Second, Jaime himself had overheard a drunken Aycha strutting

around the streets of Chuschi during Carnavales boasting about how his three

compañeros (companions) had put the horses and pig to good use. Third, the comuneros

of nearby Chaqueccocha had informed Jaime that during another drunken holiday rant,

Aycha had reproached his partners-in-crime for stealing his own money, demanding to

know “how it was possible that they would steal from him after having split [Jaime’s

swine] between [the four of] them.” Fourth, Felipe Aycha was a thief, and everyone in

the village knew it: “I know that this Felipe AYCHA has committed various robberies

[latroncitos] against various people who don’t report [him] because he threatens to make

all their cattle and horses disappear [if they do report him].” Finally, Jaime claimed that

Aycha and Chipana had both made verbal promises to repay him for his damages.74

At first, Aycha and Chipana denied the vecino’s allegations. Aside from being out of town on the nights in question, both men revealed that Ernesto Jaime formed an essential part of their extended kinship network. Jaime was Chipana’s godfather. He was

73 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 166, “Instrucción contra Felipe Aycha, Bernardo Chipana, y otros por el delito de contra el patrimonio.”

74 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 166, Manifestación de Ernesto Jaime Miranda (18 April 1979). Emphasis in the original.

also Felipe Aycha’s compadre, godfather to his seventeen-year-old son, Ignacio.75 It is

likely that Aycha and Chipana raised the issue of their spiritual relationship with the

vecino because they understood how important these relationships were to comuneros.

Most peasants saw compadrazgo (fictive/religious kinship) relationships as sacred bonds between compadres as well as between the godparent and godchild. Indigenous villagers expected their vecino compadres to treat them with more dignity and respect than they did other comuneros. They also expected their compadres to provide their godchildren with spiritual and economic guidance and, if need be, legal and physical protection. In return, comuneros understood that their children would offer their vecino godparents personal servitude. In bringing up their extended kinship with Jaime, then, Aycha and

Chipana were in a sense challenging the vecino to accuse them of violating this important social pact. But when it became clear that Jaime was prepared to go through with this accusation, the two men quickly offered signed statements in which they took full responsibility for the robberies and offered to repay Jaime for his losses.76

With Aycha, we can now detect a pattern. This was a man whose neighbors and relatives had accused him of breaking several social bonds. In the domestic sphere, he had been suspected of excessively beating his wife. He, along with Chipana—a figure whom we will also revisit in later chapters—had also admittedly scoffed at compadrazgo bonds by stealing from his compadre. Even his peones complained that he had not respected the implicit code of reciprocity that structured Andean patron-client exchanges.

75 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 166, Manifestación de Felipe Aycha (29 April 1979); Manifestación de Bernardo Chipana (circa 29 April 1979). Ignacio Aycha is a pseudonym.

76 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 166, Documento de Reposición de dos caballos, por Felipe Aycha (2 May 1979); Documento de Reposición de un cerdo, por Bernardo Chipana (2 May 1979).

Indeed, these peones seemed more concerned with this social breach than with the fact

that the job for which they had been contracted involved livestock theft. This brings us to

another of Aycha’s character flaws. Like his quispillacctino counterparts, Aycha’s

neighbors considered him a “well-known” cattle rustler who was tied to an organized

“gang” of abigeos. His official title of butcher did not fool many, serving as a convenient

cover for his illicit movement of livestock. But Aycha was not your run-of-the-mill cattle

rustler. When Alberto, Julián, and I asked villagers what they remembered most about

Aycha’s dealings, they described him as a sort of abigeo “boss,” claiming that all

chuschino cattle rustlers responded directly to him. “He was an abigeo,” tayta Víctor

insisted, “…They say that all the thieves would go to his house, [he’d] make mondongo

[a regional soup] and chala [jerkey] [with the stolen meat] right there in his house with

the thieves. The thieves would just walk right in like it was nothing, but they had to take

an oath [of allegiance] first. …He was Aycha, after all, the father of all abigeos.” As

tayta Víctor explained, it was not so much the fact that he rustled cattle that bothered

people, but it was the fact that he did not need to do it: “People said that he was a ‘bad

abigeo’ because he stole in spite of having livestock, not because he lacked it.”77

Just the way tayta Víctor described Aycha indicates how intimidating a figure he was: “He was short and stocky with a commanding voice, handsome, manly, chitón [?].”

According to tayta Víctor, Aycha used his intimidating presence in the village to his advantage, bullying other comuneros and subverting the authority of local leaders. Tayta

Víctor witnessed this intimidation first-hand when he was about nineteen. He had recently been appointed village authority when he learned that Aycha had stolen a horse

77 Interview with Víctor Núñez, Chuschi (27 July 2008).

from his community, and together with two other varayoqs he went to Aycha’s house to

detain him. Tayta Víctor suspected that Aycha might be difficult to bring down, but as he

said himself, “I was a young guy, and I wasn’t afraid of anything,” so he had the two

varayoqs wait for Aycha outside with ropes as he went in through the front door alone to

confront the suspect. When he got inside, he found only Aycha’s wife. Tayta Víctor

informed the campesina that he had orders from Quispillaccta to capture her husband, but

she said that he was out of town. “Don’t you lie to me,” he warned, but Mrs. Aycha was

not impressed. Looking the scrawny teenager up and down, she asked mockingly,

“What, do think you are going to take down my husband?” Núñez ignored her tone and

headed to the back of the house, where Aycha was waiting for him. “I beg your pardon,

Mr. Felipe, but you have to come back with me to Quispillaccta,” the youngster informed

him. “What, you are going to take me away?” Aycha chuckled, “I don’t think so, son.”

Aycha assumed a fighting stance, prompting Núñez to take out his chicote (a short

Andean whip) and remark, “You’re coming with me one way or another.” Tayta Víctor

said that he then grabbed Aycha by the neck and tried to constrain him while the other

two varayoqs came in with the ropes and tied his hands behind his back. After subduing

Aycha, the authorities then escorted him back to Quispillaccta and turned him over to

state authorities for trial. Tayta Víctor added that Aycha never did end up paying for the

crime.78 Tayta Víctor’s story paints the picture of Aycha as a sort of neighborhood bully

who used both his physical prowess and his reputation to challenge local law and

authority.

78 Interview with Víctor Núñez, Chuschi (27 July 2008).

He also used his local power to intimidate anyone who opposed his lifestyle.

Ernesto Jaime’s claim that he often threatened to “disappear” the cattle of anyone who

reported his crimes is supported by tayta Víctor’s oral account:

[His crimes] were frowned upon, but no one could touch him, hurt him, nothing. On the contrary, people would have to buy him drinks—buying him a drink was their way of saying, ‘please don’t steal my livestock.’ …No one ever crossed him because everyone was scared of him and respected [his power] even though he wasn’t even an authority or anything. …They only called him a thief behind his back. …[But if word got back to Aycha that someone was complaining about him], they’d have to go apologize to him the very next day…[or else] he’d go and steal an animal from the person who had offended him.79

It was much better to get on Felipe Aycha’s good side. Tayta Víctor told us that the

abigeo boss once attempted to bribe him as well, saying “If you need any livestock just

let me know, tell me which ones and they’re yours.”80 In this way, then, Felipe Aycha sat at the top of a power hierarchy that ran parallel to that of the indigenous authorities. Yet while comuneros such as tayta Víctor felt compelled to tolerate Aycha’s local power, they clearly saw it as neither legitimate nor just.

Troubled Youth

When brought in for questioning under suspicion of abigeato, Felipe Aycha

sometimes reminded authorities that, given his humble economic situation, he was

undersandibly doing everything possible to help his children achieve what he never

could: a proper education. Indeed, his youngest son, Ignacio, had not only received a

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

high school education, but he had even gone off to college at the National University of

San Cristóbal de Huamanga (UNSCH), in Ayacucho City. In a sense, Aycha’s

explanation implored his fellow chuschinos to see his actions not as the free-riding

delinquency of a moral deviant, but as the honorable sacrifice of a household patriarch: a

comunero father resorting to a life of criminality so that his children could get ahead in a

society dominated by Spanish-speaking mestizos. Perhaps Aycha’s neighbors would

have been more forgiving of his conduct had it not been for one minor detail: to them,

Ignacio Aycha and his brothers were also delinquents.

Before discussing behavioral patterns of youths from Ignacio’s generation, let us

explore the societal position of chuschino and quispillacctino minors before that

generation. Among indigenous chuschinos, power was tied to two major institutions.

The first was the indigenous prestige hierarchy of the varayoqs. Because Isbell has

meticulously described this customary political structure, I will not elaborate here.81

Instead, I will underscore some of the main observations about the system that she made in 1967. Isbell observed that one of the main functions of the customary authority structure was to reinforce comuneros’ collective values such as reciprocity. Status within the prestige hierarchy was directly related to the amount of public service that male varayoqs provided to the community. The higher the rank of the varayoq, the more respect he commanded from the comuneros. The oldest villagers who had provided the most years of service to the village therefore received the rank of señor cesante (“retired

81 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, ch. 4.

lord”) and enjoyed the highest social status within the community: “Such a man was indisputably apu [powerful], rich in wealth, kinsmen, and prestige.”82

Wooden staffs known as varas symbolically reinforced the authority of the varayoqs. The higher the rank of the varayoq, the more ornate was his staff. As Isbell observed: “The staff is the traditional symbol of authority, and a member of the hierarchy must carry it at all times. While he sleeps, the staff is propped up vertically against the ground. Another staff is carried on ritual occasions; it is a six-foot tree branch painted with red and green spirals. In 1967 these staffs were carried by members of the two systems associated with the village, the hatun (great) and the taksa (lesser)[.]”83 This symbolic importance was not lost on comuneros. One comunero explained the

significance of the staffs to Isbell in 1967 after explaining to her that he had had the

honor of borrowing the staff during a ritual celebration: “See that staff. When that staff is

in my house, I command and everyone has to obey.”84

The significance of this structure was not lost on adolescents. Isbell noted that although the system was designed for married men, a single adolescent boy could enter at the lowest spectrum of the prestige hierarchy as alguacil (constable).85 This would have

provided teenage boys with an appreciation for the social, political, and cultural function of the prestige hierarchy as well as a desire to rise through its ranks as adults. And when they could not enter the customary authority structure, they could participate in youth-

82 Ibid., 85.

83 Ibid.

84 Quoted in Ibid.

85 Ibid., 86.

oriented ones that mirrored that of the larger village. An example of this was the Cultural

Sporting Society “Nuestra Señora Carmen” (“Our Lady Carmen”), created in

Quispillaccta in 1953. The main purpose of the society was to provide teenage boys and

girls with an opportunity to participate in organized sports within the village while at the

same time instilling them with core communal values. As the Society’s first President

Emilio Galindo informed the Cangallo Subprefect, he hoped that the association would

“foment among the youth as much [a sense of] intellectual as physical culture[.]”86 Aside

from organizing sporting events, one of the statutes of the Society was to “organize

cultural activities, evening parties, dances, [and] charity fairs” that would simultaneously raise funds for the Society while instilling quispillacctino adolescents with a sense of communal citizenship.87 The Society had its own governing body that mirrored that of

the larger community, replete with a President, Vice President, Administrative Council

(Junta Directiva), Secretariat, Treasury, Fiscal, elected delegates, and team captains.88

This served a double purpose. First, it taught young men and women to treat members of the civil-religious prestige hierarchy with deference and respect. Second, it instilled young boys with a sense of responsibility for when they entered the prestige hierarchy later on in life.

This required them to marry first, however. According to Isbell, villagers did not become full participatory members of chuschino society until marriage. This extended to

86 AGN, MI, PA 1953, Solicitud de Emilio Galindo ante el Subprefecto de Cangallo sobre reconocimiento oficial de Sociedad Cultural (19 January 1953).

87 AGN, MI, PA 1953, Estatuto de la Sociedad Cultural Deportiva “Nuestra Señora Carmen” de Quispillaccta (19 January 1953).

88 Ibid.

the political realm, where only married men could participate in communal assemblies or,

with the exception of the agualciles, in the village prestige hierarchy. Politically

speaking, single teenagers were voiceless. Instead, they were expected to defer to the

authority of married men and women, particularly their parents. Isbell’s observation that

parents tended to favor their most devoted, servile children when it came to matters of

inheritance underscores an additional institutional mechanism for upholding this status

quo. For example, she noted that older generations exhibited a tendency towards

marriage between first cousins in order to strengthen kinship bonds. Thus, a comunero

who married outside of his clan risked losing his inheritance.89 The institution of marriage, then, like the customary system of the varayoqs, served as a major status marker within the village.

Yet beginning around the time that Isbell made her observations, younger generations of chuschinos and quispillacctinos began to challenge this status quo. With respect to unions between first cousins, for example, “[T]he younger Chuschinos state

that this type of marriage is preferred by the elders and resisted by themselves; they want

to marry whomever they wish within the traditional prohibition of not marrying anyone

who shares one’s paternal and/or maternal last names.”90 At the same time, complaints

by elders and varayoqs that the younger generation no longer respected their authority

escalated. One varayoq elder articulated this concern to Isbell, complaining that

89 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 75, 78, 81, 83.

90 Ibid., 75.

“everyone used to tremble at the sight of the staff, but no more. We have lost our

authority and no one pays us proper respect as they should.”91

Varayoq Teófilo Achallma—not to be confused with the deviant Teobaldo

Achallma—would likely have agreed with this assessment. Achallma was in charge of

safeguarding a couple of horses owned by the district Consejo. Just before midnight on

20 October 1977, Achallma stored the bucks alongside other horses owned by his

compoblanos in the stable of Totorapata, just outside the village. As he made his way

back to Chuschi, the customary authority came across three teenagers who appeared to be

heading in the direction of the stable. Upon seeing Achallma, one of the youngsters

covered his face and started running away with the other two, but not before Achallma

could identify him as Felipe Aycha’s sixteen-year-old son, Ignacio. Achallma was not to

be outrun, though, and when he caught up to the boys, he asked them where they were

headed. They told him that they were “just going up there” into the hills, indicating that

their intentions were pure. Achallma reluctantly let them continue along their journey.

This decision would eat at the varayoq for the next several hours until he finally returned

to Totorapata to check on the status of his animals. By the time he got there it was almost

4 o’clock in the morning and the young men were gone. Also gone were eight horses that

had been stored there, including the two for which Achallma had been held responsible.92

Provincial authorities arrested Ignacio and recorded his testimony on 28 October.

“As a matter of fact I did commit the robbery under my own initiative,” the chuschino

91 Quoted in Ibid., 85.

92 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83. “Instrucción contra Fernando Tapahuasco e Ignacio Aycha [pseud.] por el delito de contra el patrimonio,” Manifestación de Teófilo Tucno (27 October 1977); Informe del Instructor (3 November 1977).

student confessed. But he had done so out of necessity: “I did it because I didn’t have the

economic resources to subsist and still meet my school’s [financial] requisites.” Ignacio

said that it was under these circumstances that he struck a deal with Fernando

Tapahuasco, a janitor at UNSCH: Ignacio would steal some horses from his home village

and sell them to the janitor for 1,500 soles a head. To make the transaction appear legitimate, Aycha stole some papers bearing his father’s seal from his days as Chuschi’s

Lieutenant Governor and forged an official transaction; his father, he said, was none the

wiser.93

Yet Aycha’s victims were not content with his confession, much less with his

explanation. Over the course of the trial that ensued, the plaintiffs attempted to convince

the judge that this was a professional job spearheaded by a juvenile delinquent. “Without

a doubt,” they contended, “this smacks of a well organized, well protected abigeo gang,

and[…] given that it is a gang, they [sic] forge fake sales receipts [and] fake certificates

for one another, most likely subverting authorities and falsifying documents so that

together they can conceal the crime and give it some vestige of legality.”94 Heading this

gang was the chuschino Ignacio Aycha. “[T]his is clearly the act of a GANG, headed by the minor Aycha, a professional in this crime, who in this way mocks the law,” one of the victims put forward.95 Achallma agreed: “Ignacio Aycha has been in the habit of robbing

93 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Referencia del menor Ignacio Aycha (28 October 1977); Ampliación de la referencia del menor Ignacio Aycha (Circa 28 October 1977). Emphasis added. I discuss Felipe Aycha’s tenure as village authority in the following chapter.

94 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Denuncia de Teófilo Achallma y otros ante el Juez Instructor (18 November 1977).

95 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Denuncia de Daniel Mendoza ante el Juez Instructor (15 December 1977).

livestock from a very tender age, why many times he has done so alongside his father.”96

To cement their claims about Ignacio, the plaintiffs secured a rather uncharitable character assessment of the teenager from village authorities:

The Pledged Authorities of the Peasant Community of Chuschi…CERTIFY: That, don [Mr., sir] Ignacio Aycha, native and resident of this locality, has, as far as we are concerned since childhood, maintained a very poor conduct within our chuschina society, habitually resorted to delinquency[.] [O]n numerous occasions complaints against the aforementioned Ignacio Aycha have appeared before our offices, for crimes involving the robbery of livestock and other materials and, as far as we are concerned, every member of that family, starting with the father don Felipe Aycha, and mother and children are dedicated exclusively to this aforementioned poor conduct[.]97

Only on rare occasions did the authorities from Chuschi and Quispillaccta find something on which they could agree; this was one of those occasions. Quispillacctino authorities

issued a similar statement: “Jóven [youngster] Ignacio Aycha and his parents…are

dedicated exclusively to the theft of livestock, materials, and other things, which have

appeared before our Offices.”98

As the plaintiffs explained, the crime of abigeato, when committed in such an

organized, premeditated manner by repeat offenders, disrupted a balance within the

community: “We reject this act because the crime of abigeato is not something that can

be forgiven. Only the monetary losses can be forgiven, but not the crime itself. …For the

96 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83. “Instrucción contra Fernando Tapahuasco e Ignacio Aycha por el delito de contra el patrimonio,” Manifestación de Teófilo Tucno (27 October 1977); Informe del Instructor (3 November 1977).

97 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Certificado de las autoridades de Chuschi sobre la conducta de Ignacio Aycha (12 November 1977).

98 Ibid.

robbery committed against the community, and against comuneros, goes well beyond the

[physical act] of stealing livestock. …Therefore, we request an exemplary punishment.”99

Here, one gets a sense of the severity of the crime of abigeato. When it represented a lifestyle rather than an isolated act of desperation, cattle-rustling was an unforgivable crime that disrupted public order and therefore required immediate and “exemplary” justice. If the Peruvian court made an example of anyone, it was not Ignacio or his buddies but rather the janitor Fernando Tapahuasco, whom it held solely responsible for the crime and sentenced to a year in prison. Court records leave no indication that any of the accused youths served any jail time.100

This must have been particularly unsettling for the chuschino plaintiffs and authorities, for they detected in Ignacio Aycha’s behavior two signs that he had disregarded customary values and institutions. First, he had exhibited apathy towards the authority of the varayoqs in particular, and adults in general. We will recall that the youngster covered his face and ran away from Achallma even after the varayoq attempted to halt him. He also lied to the authority’s face when asked about his intentions. Second, the case convinced authorities that the youth no longer cherished the

common good. The numerous references to Ignacio’s delinquent background and

character were intended to provide an image of the youngster as a chuschino who had

gone astray from the chuschino pack. Although the plaintiffs never suggested it, they

may have seen Ignacio as geographical and intellectual deviant as well as a moral one, for

99 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Denuncia de Teófilo Achallma y otros ante el Juez Instructor (18 November 1977).

100 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Sentencia en la instrucción contra Fernando Tapahuasco y Ignacio Aycha por (16 April 1979).

the boy now lived and studied in Ayacucho City. Moreover, in stealing horses owned by

the Consejo (village administrative council) as well as those owned by individual chuschinos, Ignacio demonstrated his prioritization of personal livelihood and enrichment

(i.e., getting an education) over that of the community and his fellow comuneros.

Ignacio Aycha’s case is emblematic of a broader trend in local youth behavior.

Before the 1970s, most cases involving forms of social deviance such as cattle rustling involved local adults. Indeed, the youngest abigeo mentioned in this chapter was

Amancio Rejas, who first appeared in the criminal record at the age of nineteen.

Particularly beginning in the 1970s, the number of criminal proceedings involving single adolescent boys increased.101 As was the case with Ignacio, this change in youth

behavior represented a generation conflict in which an increasing proportion of local

youths were engaging in criminal activity, shunning traditional values and practices, and

failing to defer to the authority of local elders and varayoqs.

CONFLICT AND RESOLUTION IN HUAYCHAO

Let us now compare this situation with that of pre-insurgency Huaychao. As we

will see, Huaychao was not free of the kinds of social infractions that existed in Chuschi.

What differed between the villages, though, was the effectiveness of customary authority and justice in settling these conficts and, by extension, preserving internal order.

101 Ignacio Aycha’s case is particularly illustrative, but there are others which I do not mention in this manuscript. See, for example, ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 127, Exp. 24. “Instrucción contra Delfín Tomaylla y otros por el delito de contra la autoridad pública” (1975); ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 138, Exp. 22, “Instrucción contra Esteban De la Cruz y otros por el delito de contra el patrimonio” (1976).

Cattle Rustling

As we sat discussing the different ways that men from different communities

challenged one another’s masculinity during fiestas, I was struck by a comment made by

Esteban Huamán, a huaychaino in his fifties: “If someone who you think has stolen your livestock starts acting macho, then you put him in his place by saying, ‘Oh, you must be so macho from eating all my livestock!”102 This is a telling statement inasmuch as it

suggests that huaychaino men distinguished between the type of bravado displayed by

“honorable” men and that of cattle-rustlers, whose masculinity they saw as disingenuous

and undeserving because it was earned through dishonorable means. The social stigma

associated with cattle rustling served as a sort of moral check against the practice, which is just one reason livestock theft between indigenous villagers was not a major source of

conflict in Huaychao as it was in Chuschi. Whereas several chuschinos and

quispillacctinos appeared poised to “professionalize” abigeato, no single figure stands

out in the archival record or in collective memory as a career abigeo. This is not to say

that abigeato did not occur in Huaychao, for it was as commonplace in the Iquichano

highlands as it was anywhere else at the time. What distinguishes Huaychao from

Chuschi, however, is that when campesinos did engage in abigeato, they typically

targeted livestock from other villages.103 I discuss this inter-village theft in greater detail in chapter three. For now, let us turn to the exceptional instances in which intra-village

102 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán. Huaychao (5 February 2006).

103 ASH, Exp. 1968, Informe del Subprefecto al Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao sobre queja interpuesta por Zenobio Quispe contra Julián Bautista sobre robo de 3 llamas (29 May 1968).

livestock theft made it to trial, and then explain why recorded cases of cattle rustling

between huaychainos never reached the scale that it did elsewhere in Ayacucho.

In 1967, Víctor Guillén, a campesino in his late-twenties, testified to having

stolen a cow from one of his huaychaino neighbors. Guillén took his interrogators back

to October of the previous year, when he met a man named Víctor Quispe, of the village

of Pucaraccay, several kilometers away. Quispe had come to the Huaychao annex of

Tupin to sell a record player to one of Guillén’s neighbors, and the two Víctors hit it off

right away. Guillén happened to be passing through Pucaraccay on business on 13

February of the following year when he spotted Quispe drinking in a local tavern. Quispe invited Guillén to stop by on his way back to Huaychao the next day. Guillén accepted, and when he returned the next day, Quispe suggested that the two go out looking for cattle to steal. By nightfall they found themselves passing through Guillén’s home village of Huaychao. Guillén said that he had hoped to steal the cattle from another village, but it was late and they could easily see that his neighbor Francisco Cayetano had

left his cattle unattended. The two Víctors untied one of the cows and took it with them

back to Quispe’s home in Pucaraccay, where they butchered it together. They had planned on selling the meat the next day and splitting the profit, so Guillén stayed the night at Quispe’s home. The next morning, Guillén awoke to the warning calls of

Quispe’s teenage sons, who announced the arrival of Cayetano’s search committee. The committee had traced the tracks of the stolen heifer through the mud and into the village.

A panicked Guillén shoved the meat into the hollow trunk of a molle (an Andean pepper)

tree and hid inside Quispe’s home; Quispe, had already fled the scene. When Cayetano’s

committee found Guillén in the home, he had little choice but to come clean.104

Here, we find that the theft did not only involve huaychainos. Instead, Guillén’s partner in crime was a peasant from a distant village who offered him an external and seemingly safe refuge in the aftermath of the theft. Rare were the instances in which huaychainos stole each other’s animals without involving third parties from distant villages. The obvious explanation for this is that it would have been difficult for a local peasant to steal from his neighbor without the entire village learning of it. Yet this only gives us part of the answer. After all, Chuschi was also a small village, albeit not as small as Huaychao, and the prospect of public scrutiny, gossip, and scandal was not sufficient to keep some villagers from living a life of robbery. Why were huaychainos more reluctant than chuschinos to steal from their own neighbors, then?

The exceptional 1979 conflict between Cesário Pacheco and Lucas Ccente, both from the annex of Macabamba, provides us with some clues. Cayetano’s was one of two criminal cases I found between the years 1940 and 1983 for which a huaychaino stood accused of stealing another huaychaino’s animals. Pacheco lost five rams from his possession during the Feburary Carnavales (Carnival). While drinking with his macabambino neighbors one night, Pacheco reached the conclusion that fifty-five-year-

old macabambino Lucas Ccente and his twenty-three-year-old son, Elías, had stolen the

ovine. As Lucas Ccente told the police in his deposition, Pacheco severely beat Elías, giving him a black eye. Later that night, he said, Pacheco and two of his relatives, one of

104 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Leg. 7, Exp. 218, “Instrucción contra Víctor Guillén y Víctor Quispe por el delito de abigeato,” Manifestación del inculado Víctor Guillén (14 Feburary 1967); Instructiva del inculpado Víctor Guillén (18 February 1967); Preventiva de Francisco Cayetano (21 February 1967).

them a woman, barged into the house where Lucas was staying, grabbed him, and began

hitting him over the head with rocks, drawing blood in at least five different places. “If it wasn’t for the intervention of the owner of the house, they would have killed me,” Ccente

assured police. Before leaving, Ccente’s attackers literally took the shirt off his back,

leaving him half naked and half dead. Ccente told the police that he reported the incident

to Lieutenant Governor Santos Quispe, communal President Pedro Huamán, and chief

varayoq Dionisio Velasquez, but that the authorities had neglected to take action.105

Ccente vowed to take the law into his own hands: “If I don’t get justice in my village of Huaychao for what [the Pachecos] have done to me, then [my son and I] will have no choice but to fight our enemies to the death.”106 When Cesário Pacheco learned

that Ccente was seeking revenge, he brought criminal charges against Pacheco for

conspiracy to murder. In the case that ensued, Lieutenant Governor Santos Quispe

penned a letter to the judge on Pacheco’s behalf. In it, the communal authority

juxtaposed Pacheco, a man of “honor,” with Ccente, a “common criminal and thief” who

had stolen from Pacheco and others. Moreover, he said that Ccente had lost all his

neighbors’ respect since it was well known that he would often hit local women “as if

they were animals.”107

105 ACSJA, JP Huanta. Leg. 109, Exp. 799, “Instrucción contra Lucas Ccente por el delito de tentativa de homicidio,” Manifestación de Lucas Ccente (13 June 1979).

106 Ibid.

107 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 109, Exp. 799, Carta del Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao al Juez Instructor sobre la conducta del denunciado Lucas Ccente (21 May 1979).

The judge threw out the case, ruling that Lucas Ccente’s verbal threats alone were

not enough to convict him of conspiracy to murder.108 The verdict does illustrate a major

philosophical difference between state and local authority with respect to justice, however. By taking no action against Ccente’s aggressors, village authorities were tacitly approving Pacheco’s vigilante justice. The reason for this was that, as Quispe later articulated, Ccente’s neighbors saw him as a neighborhood cattle rustler and woman abuser who had had it coming. This was the sort of judgment that only local indigenous authorities who were attuned to the nuances of each individual case could provide, and it was the main reason that their authority was so valued within the village.

Authority, Justice, and Public Order

During an early visit to Huacyhao in 2006 with Julián, communal President

Fortunato Huamán, a villager in his mid-sixties, invited us to observe Tiyarikuy (“The

Seating,” or “The Enthroning”), an annual fiesta in honor of the teniente gobernador

(Lieutenant Governor) and the varayoqs. To initiate the ceremony, President Huamán pulled a whistle from his pocket and stepped out of the village assembly room, the despacho. The village authority stood atop a soggy hill and gave three long, loud blows on the whistle before returning to the despacho. Within moments, dozens of men, women, and children had assembled in the room. Once inside, the villagers took their seats along the stone stumps lined around the walls. Women and children sat near the doorway while the men, including Julián and myself, sat along the two side walls. At the

108 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 109, Exp. 799, Sentencia en la instrucción seguida contra Lucas Ccente (9 July 1979).

far end of the room opposite the doorway stood a small wooden table draped in a multi-

colored manta (blanket). Behind the table sat the guests of honor, the teniente and the

two varayoqs. President Fortunato sat just to the side of the varayoq table. On the table were plastic bottles filled with beverages. Whereas in the past the villagers consumed chicha (an Andean corn beer) and aguardiente on these occasions, today the bottles were filled with generic soda. Once everyone had been seated, President Fortunato addressed the villagers in Quechua, inviting them to bring any matters of local concern to the attention of the communal authorities. After several men and women had stood up and done this, a teenage boy poured a small portion of the table drink into a single cup and handed it to the Lieutenant Governor. The village leader then lifted the cup in a toast, took a sip, poured the residue onto the dirt floor, and passed the cup to his chief varayoq,

who sat next to him. This ritual was repeated until the cup had gone around the entire

assembly room several times and the bottles had been emptied.109

At one point, President Fortunato invited me to take a picture and video footage

of the entire room for their recuerdos (memories). When I got around to the varayoqs

and the Lieutenant Governor, the authorities insisted on posing with their varas. As we

sat and drank, President Fortunato and his twenty-seven-year-old nephew, Leandro, told

me that huaychainos had been performing this ritual since the days of their grandparents,

that is, the hacienda period. In the past, there had been six varayoqs instead of just two,

and the ritual itself had changed over time. Pointing out that the varas had been tucked

away in a corner of the room until I had pulled out the camera, they said that in the past

109 Field notes, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

the authority staffs always remained propped up vertically between the table and the floor

throughout the entire ceremony. I asked what the staffs represented. They were symbols

of respect and power, the President explained. “Like stripes on a military officer,”

chimed in Leandro, a former soldier in the Peruvian military. Leandro and his uncle told

me that before the period of political violence, a varayoq would never have been seen in

public without his vara, for the staffs commanded the respect of all villagers, constant

reminders of the authority’s local power. “That way, people could know from a distance

who was in charge in this community,” Leandro boasted. “Were varayoqs around even

during the days of the hacienda?” I asked. President Fortunato nodded his head: “Even

before, hermano (brother). And back then, the varayoqs were even more respected than

today. …Even feared, because they had so much power!”110

As President Fortunato said this, campesinas Clemencia Quispe and Serafina

Rimachi stood up and announced that they were going to perform a Qarawiy, a song of

reverence for the varayoqs. Singing a high-pitched tone, the women cried as they cited

the Quechua verse that had been passed on to them from their mothers and grandmothers:

Señor Authority Señor Authority How well enthroned you are Oh how enthroned you are Aww [reverence]

In a throne of gold In a golden seat Aww

You have no idea what

110 Ibid.

Life has in store for me Aww

How hard you work to serve the people (???) Aww

You are like the jilguero [a species of wild bird] That gives food Aww

Soon you will know, Señor Authority Señor Governor Aww

How to talk with the people Live with the people Aww

Talk, Converse Señor Authority Señor Governor Aww Aww Aww Aww111

One of the principle reasons that huaychainos had respected their authorities so

much then and in years past was because of the authorities’ role in administering justice

and upholding standards of moral conduct and public order within the community. In

what follows, I will articulate this argument by discussing the role of Huaychao’s

principle authorities during the period leading up to and following the Agrarian Reform,

which reached Huaychao in 1975-76. Before the land reform, the principle indigenous

111 Ibid.

authorities in the region were the customary varayoqs, also known as envarados, the

teniente gobernador, and the overseers of the region’s haciendas, known as caporales or

administradores. After the Agrarian Reform, the positions of communal President and

Vigilance Councilmen were also created.

Of these authorities, the only one with no official ties to outside institutions (e.g.,

the state, the hacienda) was that of the customary varayoqs. Unofficially, however, the

varayoqs became co-opted by the state bureaucracy, serving as political underlings of the

teniente gobernador. Even the oldest huaychainos, people in their late-90s, remember

this civil-religious prestige hierarchy being around long before the state bureaucracy was

in place, “desde tiempos inmemoriales” (“since time immemorial”). As in other Andean

villages such as Chuschi, varayoqs’ chief function was to uphold the community’s core

social, economic, and political structures and uphold public order. The prestige hierarchy

was inclusive and participatory only to the extent that (1) village heads of household

collectively determined who would serve each year, and (2) it was a rotational post,

meaning that all qualified villagers could, and indeed were expected to, participate. Yet,

considering that only married men could enter the prestige hierarchy and by extension

participate in local political life, village politics were actually quite exclusive.

Consequently, the traditional authority structure in Huaychao, as in Chuschi, was

rigidly patriarchal. In fact, huaychainos directly associated participation in the traditional

hierarchy with notions of masculinity. For example, Ciprián Quispe entered the prestige

hierarchy in the early 1980s as an albacea, a sort of apprentice or personal servant to the

varayoqs. When asked to describe his duties, tayta Ciprián, now in his fifties, told us, “I

was like the varayoq’s wife, because I knew what the varayoq drank, what he ate. …I

even had to wait around while he slept.” The gendered aspect of this relationship was not

lost on the other envarados, either. According to tayta Ciprián, the customary authorities

would tease young huaychaino men who had not yet ascended to the position, treating

them “as if they were young women,” pointing their authority staffs at them and saying,

“bend over and take this vara.” All this changed as soon as tayta Ciprián became

authority: “After I became varayoq, everything was fine. …After you become varayoq,

no one teases you anymore.”112

As was the case in Chuschi, the prestige hierarchy was also age-based. Younger

newlyweds entered at the bottom rungs of the hierarchy, while men who were older and

had been married longer held higher-ranking positions, and therefore enjoyed more social

prestige and respect. Newly anointed varayoqs also depended on village elders for

tutelage, and, as tayta Ciprián explained, so the elders expected younger varayoqs to heed

their advice in order to ensure that the authorities ran the community properly from

generation to generation: “As soon as you got married the [elders] would say, ‘you have

to serve [as varayoq] now. …And you have to do it while we are still alive, because if

you wait until we have passed on there will be no one around to teach you and help you.”

This help came not only in the form of tutelage, but also in a very tangible form, for it

was the elder men and women in the community who typically prepared food and drink

for the authorities during their tenure in office.113 Thus, elders had a practical, valued

social function within the community’s patriarchal structure.

112 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

113 Ibid.

One of the main points that elder men and women tried to get across to young

envarados concerned their social life. Tayta Ciprián remembered that huaychaino elders had made him promise to “cut off his tail” before becoming a varayoq in the early 1980s.

Asked to expand on this, the one-time envarado explained, “[W]hen you become an authority, you can only drink at home with your family, and you can no longer parade around the mountains during Carnavales. And if you don’t stop your old ways then folks will hit you and shun you, and you will bring dishonor and disrespect [to your post]. And that’s why they would say, ‘You must cut off your tail.’”114 In Huaychao as elsewhere in

the Andes, young singles typically used the occasion of Carnavales to engage in carnal relations outside of the village center. Thus the message against drinking outside of the household and frolicking about in the mountains was a clear warning for young varayoqs to practice sexual fidelity. Not only were they now married, but they were also now the political face of the community. As such, they needed to exhibit moral authority.

Another reason that huaychainos required their customary authorities to exhibit sound moral judgment was because they turned to these authorities to administer justice.

“Sure there were some [abusive] authorities,” Alejandra Ccente, a villager in her sixties, told us one day, “but they resolved conflicts.” She explained that when neighbors quarreled over livestock theft, boundary disputes, or in cases of domestic dispute, the varayoqs were the ones who went to the location of the conflict to settle the matter:

The [other] authorities [the Lieutenant Governor and later the communal President] didn’t go to the homes [of the people involved in the dispute], they stayed in their despacho. Only the varayoqs were dispatched to resolve the issue. When there was a problem, they would show up on the

114 Ibid.

scene and announce: ‘We’ve been sent by the [Lieutenant Governor] to resolve this problem.115

Only if they could not resolve the issue would the varayoqs then bring the afflicted

parties before the Lieutenant Governor, who served as the ultimate arbiter of justice at the

community level. In this sense, varayoqs served as sort of village policemen, responsible

for helping the teniente maintain internal order. Now in his mid-sixties, former varayoq

Isidro Huamán explained: “[The varayoq] was like the Lieutenant Governor’s right-hand-

man [el brazo del teniente]. There were six in all…and they helped the [Lieutenant]

Governor resolve every type of dispute, and they took turns bringing those who were

involved in disputes [to the despacho].”116 As more than one huaychaino intimated to

me, varayoqs were respected, even feared by their fellow villagers because of their

capacity to administer justice. In addition to carrying their varas, envarados had the

authority to use their chicotes against people whom they deemed guilty of social and

moral breaches such as excessive domestic violence, theft, and sexual deviance. This last

category had less to do with rape than with adultery and incest, as tayta Fortunato’s experience as varayoq elucidates: “There was a rape case from Tupin when I was secretario [Secretary]. The rapist had raped his blood sister, so we took him back here

[to central Huaychao] and detained him and interrogated him until he confessed: ‘How many times did you rape her? Where, in the mountains?’…Of course, we [flogged him with a chicote three times:] Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”117 As tayta Ciprián told us,

115 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

116 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

117 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

villagers associated strong leadership with the ability to administer justice: “[An authority

was considered good] if he cared for his neighbors while at the same time knowing how

to resolve conflicts [between villagers]. If he did those things we would say, ‘Now that

guy is doing a good job and he’s within his rights.” When asked if he could recall any

authorities who overstepped these rights, tayta Ciprián shook his head: “Only the abigeos

[were out of line], not the authorities. The authorities only whipped people with the chicote if they had it coming, like if they hit or left their wife.”118

These authorities also settled violent altercations between fellow villagers. Mama

(Mrs., Ma’am) Alejandra discussed the nature of these fights: “Back in those days men

would fight hard, especially during Carnavales, they’d hit each other with esquilas [a

bronze musical instrument typically played during the festivities], and with látigos

[leather whips, longer than chicotes].” After these clashes, communal authorities would

intervene to effect reconciliation between the opposing sides. Seventy-six-year-old

Brigida Cayetana described this process: “[The authorities] might whip [the fighters] with a chicote and then have them face each other and ask one another forgiveness right there in front of the authorities and the [religious] effigies. [The fighters] would then hug each other and say, ‘forgive me.’”119 Mama Alejandra made a similar observation, adding that

after reconciling, the two sides, together with the authorities, would partake in a libation

ceremony in the presence of the communal patron-saints. “After that,” she said, “the two

sides would forget about everything [they were fighting about] and go about their

118 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

119 Interview with Brigida Cayetano, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

business as if nothing had ever happened.”120 To be sure, this highly ritualized act of

reconciliation did not always do the trick, and sometimes the two neighbors would walk away from it secretly agreeing to revisit the conflict “whenever, wherever,” as mama

Brigida put it.121 Yet this ritualized display of physical humiliation followed by

reconciliation served as a public reminder of why one ought to avoid such confrontation in the first place.

And if this physical and moral retribution did not do the trick, the civil one often did. “The authorities would make people pay each other for blood spilled during a fight,” mama Brigida continued, “They would pay [the aggrieved party] money or, if it was a lot of blood, they might have to give them a goat.”122 Tayta Ciprián made a similar

observation involving a case that he resolved during his tenure as varayoq: “One time I

brought an abigeo before the teniente and together we settled the matter. [The abigeo]

was from right here in Huaychao, and he had robbed two sheep. So we told him he had

to repay the owner, which he did, because he admitted to it, saying, ‘I’m guilty.’” When

we followed up by asking if he had physically punished the guilty party, tayta Ciprián

shook his head: “Manam [No]. We never physically punished them when they admitted

it. We only did that when [the suspect] started acting macho, saying ‘I didn’t do it and I

assume no responsibility.”123

120 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

121 Interview with Brigida Cayetano, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

122 Ibid.

123 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

This last statement led me to the harsh conclusion that authorities probably

flogged innocent people. After discussing the issue further with tayta Ciprián and other

former envarados, however, I realized that it was not so much the denial of guilt that got

people into trouble as much as it was the way that the suspect pleaded his case. The

emphasis in tayta Ciprián’s statement, for instance, was on the fact that the suspect “se

puso macho” [started acting macho],” rather than on the denial per se.124 What such acts

of defiance did was undermine the varayoq’s authority, an act which in and of itself merited punishment. Tayta Isidro explained this to Julián and me one afternoon:

“Varayoqs were feared because they carried chicotillos [little chicotes], and they would take [the guilty parties] to the despacho and hit them with the chicotillo to correct their behavior. …[But they also whipped people] for not respecting one another, for getting into fights, or for not respecting their own authority. People knew they had the authority to do that, which is why they tried their best to behave themselves and to give them due respect.”125

Another way for varayoqs to administer justice was through the use of the juez

rumi, a Spanish-Quechua hybrid meaning “the rock of justice.” The juez rumi is a five-

foot tall, two-foot-wide boulder occupying the center of Huaychao’s village square.

Huaychainos claim the rock has been there “desde los tiempos de los abuelos” (“since

our grandparent’s generation”), and it remains there to this day. Whenever authorities

wanted to make an example of someone for a social breach they considered too minor for

124 For a discussion of the gendered aspect of this notion in the Iquichano highlands, see Ponciano Del Pino, “Los campesinos en la guerra, o como la gente comienza a ponerse macho,” in Carlos Iván Degregori, et al, eds. Perú: El problema agrario en debate/SEPIA IV (Lima: SEPIA, 1992): 487-508.

125 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

economic sanctions or a flogging, they would tie their hands behind their backs with a

rope, position them standing up with their backs against the juez rumi, and wrap a larger

rope around both the person and the rock. Tayta Ciprián, who was born in the mid-

1950s, confessed that communal authorities never resorted to this form of punishment during his lifetime, but he said that his father and grandfather mentioned having used it on the hacienda. They told him that one type of infraction deserving of this punishment had to do with communal work projects, the faenas: “Back then when they constructed the fence surrounding the village square some people would neglect to bring their own rock to the faena [to contribute to the construction]…and whoever came without their rock was tied to the rumi. …They would tie them upright to that rumi instead of punishing them with a chicote. Afterwards [the authorities] would let them go and they would return carrying their own rock [for the fence construction].”126 Mariano Quispe,

who was at least twenty years Ciprián’s elder, also could not remember a specific

incident in which authorities had used this technique. Nevertheless, he confirmed tayta

Ciprián’s story: “Yes, my parents told me that [the authorities] would tie people [to the

rock]…back when they were [holding faenas to] build the church and the houses. Those

who were slacking off would get tied to [to the juez rumi.]127 Unlike tayta Ciprián, however, the elder Mariano also remembered his parents talk of authorities putting more serious offenders, such as thieves and adulterers, to the rock of justice. Yet after tying villagers to the rock for these more serious offenses, authorities would also have them

126 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

127 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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publicly flogged.128 Tayta Isidro’s parents told him the same thing, saying that, more

than any other offenders, it was the abigeos who received this treatment.129

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the juez rumi is that there is no definitive

evidence that it was ever used as a method of justice. Whenever elders such as those

mentioned above spoke of peasants using the rock as an instrument of extralegal justice,

they did so with the caveat that they themselves never actually saw the rock used in that

way. All they could say was that the rock was in place as long as they could remember

and that their parents spoke of using it to administer justice on the hacienda. Therefore,

we cannot rule out the possibility that the “rock of justice” was an “invented tradition,” a

sort of local fable that served as a constant public reminder to huaychainos of the fate that

could await them if they ever placed self-interest ahead of the community.130 Notice, for example, that the first group of people supposedly brought to justice by the rock were those who were said to have fallen short of their collective labor obligations at the very moment when the key symbols of the community—the local church, the village square— were being constructed. Likewise, those who supposedly experienced the more severe punishment of being tied to the rock and flogged were villagers whose material and sexual avarice had infringed upon the material and marital well-being of their fellow neighbors: people like the adulterers and the socially denigrated abigeos. In the final

128 Ibid.

129 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

130 See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

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analysis, the issue of whether the juez rumi was actually used to enforce moral conduct on the hacienda or whether it was simply a product of local mythology is irrelevant.

Either way, it served as a discursive symbol that had shaped local historical memory and reinforced social mores about village justice. Whether or not huaychainos had actually used the technique themselves mattered little, for they knew exactly how they could use it should circumstances so require—something to keep in mind for chapter five.

Before turning to a discussion of the other local authorities in Huaychao, I would like to return to the episode that I brought up at the beginning of this section, the

Tiyarikuy ceremony in honor of the authorities. This ceremony gives us important clues as to the final two expectations that huaychainos had of their indigenous authorities: paternalism and reciprocity. In return for their deference to and respect for the varayoqs, huaychainos expected their customary leaders to give back to the villagers and protect their common interests. For instance, the lyrics of the Qarawiy emphasized the service aspect of the job, reminding newly anointed authorities of their duty to “feed” their constituents, as the mother “jilguero” would her chicks. This lyric reminded the new patriarchs that they would ultimately be held responsible for the material well-being of the village. How an envarado managed irrigation rotations, communal harvests, and communal pasture lands mattered in a rural landscape susceptible to famine and drought.

This notion was reinforced at various other points throughout the ceremony as well. For example, each varayoq allowed each villager to drink from his own cup before literally feeding the guests food that he and the other varayoqs had prepared for the occasion.131

131 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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As mama Alejandra told us, women who participated in the ceremony, her mother included, would speak for the collective when they told the new authorities: “We are in your hands now, señores autoridades. This year we are with you. We are all your children now, so therefore you must resolve conflicts without favoring your own parents and children.”132 This was not mere rhetoric, for throughout the remainder of the year,

huaychainos turned to their varayoqs to lead faenas for the collective good. Tayta

Mariano remembered that during his tenure as varayoq, sometime in the 1970s, he

gathered, he had helped organize faenas to pave dirt roads around the community and to

rebuild the village chapel after a lightning bolt split it in two.133 How well an authority

organized these projects was therefore a reflection of his paternalistic ability to protect the common interest.

The emphasis on “talking” and “conversing” with the villagers reminded authorities that they were ultimately political leaders, and as such they needed to maintain dialogue with their constituents in order to ensure that their needs were being addressed.

This explains why the first part of the ceremony is dedicated to a public assembly in which villagers are encouraged to bring local matters to the attention of the new leaders.

Another tradition that preceded the Tiyarikuy was the vara visita [‘the varayoq visit’].

During this occasion, which took place at the beginning of each year when the new

varayoqs were named, the leaders would visit each household in Huaychao and its

annexes of Macabamba, Ccochaccocha, Tupin, Patacorral, Mallau, and Llalli. The six

varayoqs and their assistants would approach each peasant household explaining that

132 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 Feburary 2006).

133 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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they were the envarados and that for the remainder of the year they would be at the

community’s service. The authorities would take the occasion to cordially invite the

heads of household to attend the upcoming Tiyarikuy ceremony in their honor. In turn,

the heads of household would then invite their guests to drinks of trago (liquor), raising their cups and toasting, “Michiykuwankiku, difindiykuwankiku, “You will be our shepherds, you will defend us.” At the end of the libation ceremony, the authorities would then hurry to the next household to repeat the same ritual.134

Let us now explore the role of the Lieutenant Governor, whom huaychainos

consider the community’s most prestigious and powerful political authority. It is unclear

when the position of the Lieutenant Governor was created in Huaychao, but it appears to

have already been in place when hacendado (hacienda lord) Enrique Juscamaita

purchased the estate in 1962. This would have made Huaychao one of the first haciendas

in the region to have a teniente post, a post that it has continued to hold to the present.

Tenientes were technically state officials, intended to serve as bureaucratic mediators

between the regional government and the local populace. Huaychao’s tenientes

responded directly to the Governor in Huanta City. Unlike in Chuschi, however,

Lieutenant Governors in Huaychao were drawn from and elected by the indigenous

peasantry.135 Consequently, huaychainos held these local political leaders to the same standard that they held their varayoqs. For example, when asked to describe what he and his fellow villagers had looked for in a teniente gobernador, tayta Mariano responded,

134 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006); Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

135 The Huanta Province Subprefect made the final approval of all nominees, however.

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“We looked for the person who had good ideas, who behaved himself, was good with

words, and who people minded.”136 In effect, huaychainos incorporated the position of

the teniente into their indigenous authority structure. At the same time, huaychainos recognized that a teniente’s uniqueness lied in the fact that his authority had been legitimized by the state. This could be potentially advantageous, for the officials could ostensibly serve as the community’s political ambassadors to the central government.

For this reason, huaychainos exalted the position of Lieutenant Governor to the top of the

local hierarchy, conferring on tenientes more administrative power than the varayoqs

themselves. Understandably, this power sometimes fomented tensions between these

indigenous bureaucrats and their fellow villagers or varayoqs. For the most part,

however, huaychainos increasingly legitimized the Lieutenant Governor’s political rule

because of his symbolic and actual role in enforcing moral conduct and upholding

collective interests, values, and public order through a customary administration of

justice.

Jesús Ccente was one of these authorities during Enrique Juscamaita’s tenure as

hacendado. In 1963, Subprefect Vidal Alcántara Cárdenas issued a letter to the Governor

of Huanta District reprimanding him for failing to control Ccente. Describing the

teniente as “a leading agitator of the indígenas of the Huaychao estate,” Alcántara

ordered the Governor to fire Ccente immediately and bring him in to custody. This was

more of a difficult task than it appeared, however, for three days later a frustrated

Alcántara reported to the Departmental Prefect that his efforts to capture the huaychaino

136 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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leader had been unsuccessful.137 While the written record left no indication of the

specifics of the case, Ccente’s contemporaries told Julián and me that the former

authority had been leading an effort to dismantle the hacienda at the time. This is very

likely, given that a broader, grassroots struggle for land reform had been developing in

the Huanta highlands that same year. Today, huacyhainos credit Ccente for having

brought the land reform to Huaychao.138

Another Lieutenant Governor on Juscamaita’s hacienda was Zenobio Quispe, who

assumed the post in August 1972. Unlike Ccente, state authorities seemed content with

Quispe’s comportment as teniente. When Marcial Huamán went to take census on the

hacienda in September of that year, he reported to his superior in Huanta City that Quispe

was a man “of great humanist character” who extended him the utmost respect and

hospitality during his visit. The same could not be said of the varayoqs, he lamented.

During Huamán’s entire visit to Huaychao, the customary authorities had wanted nothing to do with him, remaining, he speculated, “hidden or lost or something.” Locals told the empadronador (census taker) that the chief envarado was ill and could not meet with

him, whereas the second-in-command Marcelo Yaranqa “failed to recognize the authority

of the Lieutenant Governor” and disappeared after a brief meeting with the state

official.139

137 ASH, Exp. 1963, Mandato del Subprefecto al Gobernador (30 November 1963); Informe del Subprefecto al Prefecto (3 December 1963).

138 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006). For more on the regional land struggle, see Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

139 ASH, Exp. 1972, Informe del Empadronador al Jefe de Sección (21 September 1972).

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What the census taker might not have known was that the teniente’s political

legitimacy was being challenged at the time. Following the empadronador’s visit to the

hacienda, Quispe penned a note to the census bureau’s provincial engineer complaining

that Yaranqa and the other varayoqs had no respect for his authority. Not only did the

customary authorities fail to participate in the census, Quispe explained, but Yaranqa had

begun a local campaign against him and the Peruvian state.140 For his part, the varayoq

Yaranqa joined with three other comuneros in explaining villagers’ opposition to the

local leader. As far as they were concerned, Quispe had been appointed Lieutenant

Governor “to uphold moral [conduct] and good customs” on the hacienda. To that end, they informed the Subprefect, the Lieutenant Governor “left much to be desired[.]”

Quispe, a married man, had been living with another woman. At the same time, he had

“offered up” (“entregado”) his twenty-two-year-old daughter to another married man.

Quispe had done all this, they complained, “with no respect for social mores.” The petitioners explained that all this was particularly offensive given that it was being done by a communal authority: “Given that an immoral authority loses the respect of his neighbors, it is necessary to have him removed [from office].”141 The Lieutenant

Governor issued a prompt response denying the allegations. Claiming to have served

“with honor and diligence” since taking up the post in August of that year, Quispe

portrayed himself as the victim of a political attack spearheaded by his varayoqs and

140 ASH, Exp. 1972, Informe del Teniente Gobernador al Ingeniero Provincial del Censo Nacional (circa 22 September 1972).

141 ASH, Exp. 1972, Solicitud de vecinos de Huaychao sobre renovación de Teniente Gobernador (26 September 1972).

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comuneros.142 Records do not specify whether the Subprefect granted the huaychainos’

request, but they do reveal that Quispe was no longer Lieutenant Governor as of 1975.143

What was behind this rebellious behavior on the part of the envarados and comuneros? It is important to contextualize this rift historically. The census being taken at the time was known a censo agropecuario, pertaining to livestock and agriculture.

This was a project undertaken by the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces

(GRFA) in accordance with the national Agrarian Reform Law, enacted in 1968. The land reform first reached the Iquichano highlands around the time this census was taken, between 1972 and 1975. The varayoqs may have sensed that they would lose their local hegemony to the Lieutenant Governor if the hacienda were to be dismantled. Along the same lines, they may have sided with the hacendado and therefore saw no practical reason to replace him as the principal arbiter of justice within the community.144 This would explain why they saw no need to comply with the census project, for they most certainly suspected that such compliance would precipitate a major shift in local land tenure and authority structures. But the Agrarian Reform did reach Huaychao in 1975-

76, and despite their inhibitions, the varayoqs maintained much of their pre-Agrarian

Reform status within the community. Still, the Lieutenant Governor, together with the newly established communal President, was recognized as the principal village leader.

142 ASH, Exp. 1972, Carta de Zenobio Quispe al Subprefecto (circa 1 October 1972).

143 ASH, Exp. 1975, Solicitud de garantías de Ana Ramos (7 March 1975).

144 See chapter two for a discussion of the reasons why some huaychainos favored the hacienda system and allied with the hacendado.

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These structural changes alone do not explain the conflict, however, for there was also a cultural element. The complaint about Quispe’s sexual deviation is consistent with the descriptions that huaychainos gave us about the standard of conduct to which they held their varayoqs. Even though he was under no moral contract in the eyes of the

Peruvian government, indigenous huaycahainos felt strongly that, as a local leader,

Quispe needed to adhere to customary codes of conduct.

Another way for a teniente to relinquish his moral authority was for him to associate himself with cattle rustlers or to exhibit poor judgment when it came to the arbitration of justice. To Anselmo Quispe, an indígena from the pago (annex) of

Ccochaccocha, Lieutenant Governor Vicente Quispe had committed both of these social infractions. It all started, Anselmo told the Juez Instructor, in July 1980, just seven months after Vicente had been nominated teniente. Three locals had recently stolen a pair of horses and a mule during a trip to the neighboring province of La Mar. When they returned to Huaychao, teniente Vicente forged a certificate of ownership for the three animals so that they could sell them. But rather than place his or his accomplices’ names on the certificate, the teniente placed Anselmo’s name on it so that police would arrest him instead since one of the thieves matched Anselmo’s general physical description. Sure enough, the owner of the stolen animals found them along with the forged certificate and sent police to Anselmo’s residence to arrest him as the author of the crime. After the arrest, Anselmo continued, the Lieutenant Governor apologized to him for involving him in this conspiracy, but when Anselmo made it clear that he would seek legal action, the local authority detained him in the calabozo and submitted him to physical abuses. “This Authority,” Anselmo added, “is involved in a conspiracy and

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cover-up and has abandoned his duty as Administrator of Justice[.]”145 Once again, criminal proceedings do not indicate how the case was resolved, but we do know that the following year the huaychaino Pedro Huamán had replaced Quispe as teniente

gobernador.146 As numerous huaychaino elders intimated to Julián and me in 2006,

Pedro Huamán was a man of honor and integrity. For this reason, his compoblanos

honored him by electing him Huaychao’s first communal President around 1980.

Anselmo’s accusation demonstrates a shared huaychaino assumption that the teniente’s most important duty was to administer justice fairly in the community.

Huaychainos only brought offenses they considered “serious” to the attention of the

Lieutenant Governor, cases involving repeat offenders who had failed to correct behavior that violated social norms. These included abigeos, fathers who had abandoned their nuclear families, and cheating spouses.147 These were also cases that the varayoqs alone

could not resolve. Mama Alejandra reminisced about the effectiveness of this system one

morning: “In those days [of the hacienda and immediately afterwards], the authorities

were honorable. The teniente would tell [his varayoqs], ‘Find those [wrongdoers]

wherever they may be and bring them to me to solve the problem.’”148 The teniente also

had the power to discipline people who had failed to recognize the authority of the

varayoqs, as mama Alejandra continued: “People used to obey the [varayoqs’ orders]

145 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1980, 20 expedientes), Exp. 139, “Instrucción contra Vicente Quispe y otros por el delito de contra la administración de justicia y otros,” Nombramiento de Teniente Gobernador de Huacyhao (11 January 1980); Denuncia de Anselmo Quispe ante el Juez Instructor (14 July 1980).

146 ASH, Exp. 1982, Nombramiento de Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao (12 January 1982).

147 Interview with Fortunato and Esteban Huamán., Huaychao (5 February 2006).

148 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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without question, because if someone talked back, saying, ‘Get lost, I’ve got livestock to

graze!’ then the varayoqs would report this to the teniente and without hesitation he’d

lock the person who disrespected the authority in the calabozo…for a really long

time.”149

Once an internal conflict had been brought to the attention of the teniente, he could draw from a number of customary techniques to resolve it. Like the varayoqs, a

teniente carried a whip. Yet whereas the varayoqs used smaller chicotes, the tenientes carried látigos, which were longer and with a nastier bite. Only the tenientes are said to have had the authority to order someone tied to the juez rumi or to impose a fine in money or livestock; the varayoqs merely aided in the process. The tenientes gobernadores also had the sole authority to lock social deviants in the calabozo for as long as they saw fit. Finally, the despacho itself had the psychological impact of a police station, for it was the location where the teniente carried out his interrogations and hearings. Thus, unlike the varayoqs, whom the teniente dispatched to investigate local disputes, the Lieutenant Governor had the psychological advantage of administering justice on his own turf. Seventy-year-old Santos Huaylla revisited an occasion in which he had reported a cattle rustler to the Lieutenant Governor. Once the suspect had entered the despacho, the teniente had his hands tied behind his back with a rope and began flogging him with his látigo. Between lashes, the authority interrogated the suspect:

“Why did you steal? [I won’t stop whipping] until you talk or confess.”150 Of course, the best Lieutenant Governors were those who only used these tactics as a last resort. Tayta

149 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

150 Interview with Santos Huaylla, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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Ciprián remembered with satisfaction a time when he had reported a fellow villager to the

Lieutenant Governor for stealing one of his sheep. Rather than castigate the suspect, the

authority simply shamed him into a confession: “He said, ‘Why did you steal from this person? If you’re going to steal, you should steal from somewhere far away.’ And so the guy answered: ‘I admit I was wrong to do it and I’ll pay him back.”151

As the above discussion has shown, even though there were plenty of cases of

conflict between indigenous tenientes and their subordinates, this was not enough to

undermine their political legitimacy, for huaychainos recognized that they, like the traditional varayoqs, served an important function with respect to the local administration of justice and preservation of internal order.

The only local authority not to survive the 1975 land reform was the caporal, whose official duty was to ensure that his fellow campesinos worked diligently for his boss, the hacienda lord. On the one hand, caporales served as sort of mediators between the indigenous tenants and the estate owner. On the other hand, caporales had a rather tenuous relationship with the indigenous peasantry because their power was not necessarily consensual. Varayoqs were always chosen by indigenous heads of household. Even Lieutenant Governors were nominated by their indigenous constituencies, although final approval for the appointment was made by the provincial

Subprefect.152 Conversely, hacendados hand-picked their indigenous overseers based on their personal loyalty and capacity to delegate. Nevertheless, huaychainos still held these

151 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

152 Typically, huaychainos would submit a list of three popularly elected candidates to the Subprefect and the provincial bureaucrat would make his appointment based on that recommendation.

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local power holders to the same moral standards to which they held their popularly

elected leaders.

The story of huaychaino Luis Huamán, caporal of the neighboring hacienda of

Tupin, is exemplary.153 Huamán began working on the estate around 1950, where over

the next five years he rented a modest plot of about six yugadas.154 Huamán considered

himself a good tenant who paid his rent “punctually” and labored “enthusiastically.”155

Hacendado Julio Ruiz Pozo must have agreed, for he appointed Huáman caporal sometime around 1955. Huamán did not last long in his new post, however. In June of that year, Huaychao’s Lieutenant Governor Basilio Huaylla penned a letter to the hacendado in which he called Huamán’s behavior into question. Speaking on behalf of the other huaychaino tenants of the Tupin hacienda, the local authority charged that

Huamán was “a habitual and insolent thief who robs potatoes from the hacienda[.]”

Huaylla went on to cite three separate instances in which Huamán had stolen llamas from his fellow tenants before closing with the following reminder: “Señor Ruis [sic], you have the right to correct this matter of criminality and robbery.”156 The hacendado took

action, having Huamán’s huaychaino brother-in-law, Ramón Bautista, replace him as

caporal and evict Huamán from the estate. Huamán later complained to the departmental

Prefect that both the hacendado and the newly-appointed caporal were “doing everything

153 Tupin became an annex of Huaychao after the Agrarian Reform.

154 A yugada is a measurement of land typically refering to the amount that is workable in one day with two oxen.

155 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1954-1959, 20 expedientes), Exp. 99. “Instrucción contra Julio Ruiz Pozo por el delito de robo de especies,” Denuncia de Luis Huamán ante el Prefecto (20 February 1956).

156 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1957, 33 expedientes), Exp. 11, Carta del Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao al propietario de la hacienda Tupin (6 March 1955).

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in their power to mortify me, having taken…kitchen utensils, work tools, and articles of

the utmost importance from my home.”157 Huamán refused to budge, however,

remaining on the hacienda through the New Year. Then, on 17 February 1956, the

mestizo land baron penned his new caporal an urgent note:

Dear Ramón: First thing after you arrive [to the estate] tomorrow you all [sic] are going to collect all the potatoes that have been harvested on the hacienda and later on those with [cargo] animals can bring them to me. Without further [adieu], Your sincere patrón and [Y]ours truly, Julio Ruiz Pozo.158

The next day Bautista appeared before Huamán’s home with a small army of

about eighteen indigenous field hands. Huamán denounced the action before Huacyhao’s

new Lieutenant Governor, César Flores. Perhaps sensing that the local authority would

not intervene on his behalf, Huamán took the case to the departmental Prefect as well,

claiming that Bautista and his lackeys ordered him to gather all the potatoes that

remained on his parcel and turn them over to the hacendado. In all, Huamán estimated to

have filled about twenty-five sacks worth of potatoes for the hacendado. Meanwhile, he

and his family had been left “completely miserable and hungry.”159

Although Huamán felt that the mestizo lord bore some of the blame, he also felt that the indigenous overseer had acted on his own accord. Lamenting that Bautista’s

157 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1954-1959, 20 expedientes), Exp. 99, Denuncia de Luis Huamán ante el Prefecto (20 February 1956); Manifestación policial de Ramón Bautista (13 March 1957).

158 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1954-1959, 20 expedientes), Exp. 99, Copia de la carta de Julio Ruiz a Román Bautista (circa 17 February 1957).

159 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1957, 33 expedientes), Exp. 11, Informe del Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao ante el Subprefecto (18 February 1956); ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1954-1959, 20 expedientes), Exp. 99, Denuncia de Luis Huamán ante el Prefecto (20 February 1956).

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record as administrador was “nothing to brag about [nada recommendable],” Huamán informed the Prefect of various trespasses which Bautista had committed against him and his family over the past year:

Last year, he stole the following items from my house: an iron pot…[;] 8 arrobas160 of salt[;] A lamp, which he snatched from [my] 2 children while they were collecting the broad-bean harvest. Continuing his already mentioned wickedness [maldad], he ordered me to gather up all my broad bean crops, which were ripe at the time, so he could eat them all. …He has taken out all his wrath against me and my family, out of jealousy that all my hard work has paid off in getting me a couple of animals and some economic progress. …And now the landlord, having believed all the Administrador’s false accusations, harbors ill-will towards me[.]161

Bautista maintained that he was merely following the hacendado’s orders.162 The

hacendado initially denied this, maintaining that his caporal had simply misunderstood

the spirit of his letter.163 However, when it became clear that Huamán could not control

his behavior, such an excuse was no longer necessary. On the morning of 1 February

1957, Bautista accused Huamán of stealing potatoes from his fields in retaliation for his

actions of the previous year. At first the two men exchanged words, then they exchanged

blows.164 This may have been all the proof Ruiz needed to admit that he had indeed

160 An arroba is a Spanish unit of weight, equal to about twenty-five pounds.

161 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1957, 33 expedientes), Exp. 11, Denuncia de Luis Huamán ante el Prefecto (6 February 1957).

162 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1954-1959, 20 expedientes), Exp. 99, Manifestación policial de Ramón Bautista (13 March 1957).

163 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1957, 33 expedientes), Exp. 11, Manifestación de Julio Ruiz Pozo (13 March 1957).

164 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg (1957, 23 expedientes), Exp. 153, “Instrucción contra Luis Huamán por el delito de lesiones,” Preventiva de Ramón Bautista (9 February 1957); Instructiva de Luis Huamán (9 February 1957).

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intended to evict Huamán. The hacendado explained that his indigenous tenants had denounced Huamán as “a bad seed [un mal elemento] and an abigeo” and that they had demanded his eviction from the hacienda. Given this situation, he continued, “I had no choice but to have him vacate my estate, and as a consequence he no longer had any right to harvest [his crops], and that’s why my new Caporal wouldn’t even let Huamán near my hacienda[.]” The judge agreed, ruling in favor of hacienda justice.165

What is interesting about this case is that even though Huamán was not elected by

his fellow tenants, they still held him to the same moral standard to which they held other

local authorities. Once it was clear that he had failed to adhere to this unwritten social

pact, the indigenous tenants pressured the hacendado to have him replaced and evicted from the estate. In this way, then, popular justice prevailed over the avarice of an individual power holder.

This would not be the first time that a local caporal was decried for abusing his

authority. Indígena José Huamán was born and raised on the Huaychao hacienda, where

he owned a small house and a handful of sheep and horses and rented out a parcel of land where he cultivated tubers. Huamán had been making his living on the hacienda for nearly half a century without so much as a complaint when the mestizo Enrique

Juscamaita took over the hacienda in 1962. As far as we know, Huamán did not complain about the change in land tenure or about his new patrón. He did take issue with

Juscamaita’s new caporal, however. In 1965, Huamán made the long journey to Huanta

City to inform the Subprefect that the new administrador, a local indígena named Santos

165 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1957, 33 expedientes), Exp. 11, Instructiva de Julio Ruiz Pozo ante el Juez Instructor (20 October 1957); Sentencia en el caso sobre Ramon Bautista (9 April 1958).

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Quispe, had “mistreated” him. The Subprefect’s report did not detail the nature of the

mistreatment, however, and it appears that nothing ever came of Huamán’s complaint.166

In fact, just two years later, Huamán returned to the provincial bureaucrat’s office, this time defending the caporal. According to Huamán, another huaychaino named Vicente

Bautista had been disturbing the peace on the hacienda. Huamán said that Bautista had attacked Juscamaita’s caporal with a rock and that now Bautista was threatening to kill him as well. This evidence was enough for Huamán to denounce Bautista as a

“dangerous individual” and “potential murderer” who needed to be brought under control.167 This suggests that whatever abuses Huamán felt the administrador had

committed two years earlier, he had gotten over them by 1967. At the very least, he felt

that the overseer’s abuses did not merit a physical attack on Quispe’s person.

In fact, Quispe’s contemporaries felt that he had done a fine job as caporal

because he had exhibited many of the qualities that they expected from their local

leaders. When asked to talk about these qualities, men tended to focus on their overseers’

patriarchal qualifications. President Fortunato and tayta Esteban, for instance, said that

they had considered overseers such as Santos Quispe to be good caporales because they

had “commanded well” and were “most respected” by their fellow peones. Similarly,

tayta Mariano told us that caporales “took care of” their workers.168 Women, on the

other hand, tended to focus more on the caporales’ paternalistic empathy for their

166 ASH, 1965, Informe del Subprefecto al Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao (31 May 1965).

167 ASH, 1967, Solicitud de José Huamán ante el Subprefecto (circa 5 August 1967).

168 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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peones. Ernestina Ccente, a campesina in her seventies, talked about how the hacienda

administrators would explain why they were so bossy: “The caporal would order us

around in Quechua…saying, ‘If you don’t work faster, the patrón is going to reprimand

me.’ And so the [peones] would go ahead and fetch leña, work the cornfields, etc.”169

Mama Alejandra made a similar observation: “[The caporal] would make us work, yelling at us occasionally, ‘Work hard so that you don’t get in trouble with the patrón.’”170

Above all, caporales played a crucial role in upholding public order and instilling campesinos with a work ethic on the hacienda. Just as the varayoqs of years past were

fabled to have tied lazy workers to the juez rumi, so the caporales patrolled the perimeter

of the hacienda to ensure that peones labored industriously. The difference, however,

was that caporales threatened slackers and malingerers with physical castigation via the

chicote. Mama Alejandra remembered that as a child, the adult peones would alert one

another whenever the caporal came around: “The caporal is coming! Work faster so he

doesn’t hit us!” After making this statement, mama Alejandra reflected, “The caporal

used to be respected—out of fear.”171 Tayta Mariano recalled that caporales helped settle

disputes that erupted between peones during work shifts: “The caporal alone would

reprimand [quarreling peones] and they would apologize to one another, recognizing that

they had simply gotten caught up in the heat of work.”172 Sometimes, sheer reasoning

169 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

170 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

171 Ibid.

172 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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was not enough to resolve these disputes. This was when the threat of the caporale’s

whip came into play. As mama Ernestina recalled, caporales sometimes resorted to

cracking their chicotes on the backs of tenants if deemed necessary to keep workers in

line.173

Yet no one we interviewed could remember a specific case in which a caporal or

any other local authority had submitted women to physical punishments. The possible

exception came in a 1958 court case initiated by Modesta Huamán of the annex of

Ccochaccocha. Huamán had failed to return a basija de barro (clay pot) three years after

having borrowed from the communal supply. Caporales Bernabé Huaylla and Pablo

Quispe rounded up a small band of huaychaino men to recover the pot. When Modesta

refused the administradores entry, they confiscated one of her rams as payment. Were it not for the fact that Modesta’s infant of six months perished four days later, she likely would not have reported the incident. Instead, Huamán blamed the caporales for the loss of her child, claiming that Huaylla had pushed her down during the altercation, producing a fatal blow to the child whom she had wrapped in a manta on her back. Huaylla denied the charges, maintaining that he not only had kept his hands off of his compoblana throughout the episode, but that the child was already ill at the time. As he recalled it, it was Modesta who had hit him with a stick as he carried the ram off the property.

Caporal Pablo Quispe and the other witnesses corroborated Huaylla’s testimony, affirming that the caporal had only exchanged words with the plaintiff. Unfortunately

173 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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for Huamán, the autopsy report confirmed that her child had died of a stomach ailment,

finding no evidence of physical trauma.174

One way for villagers to legitimize their caprales’ authority was to elect them to

other positions of communal authority once their tenure as caporales had expired. In this way, the position of the caporal and its role in administering local justice was essentially incorporated into the post-hacienda political structure, for it coincided with the creation of two additional political posts, the communal President and the Vigilance Councilman, and the expansion of the power of the Lieutenant Governor. Such a fate awaited Santos

Quispe, who was elected communal President and Lieutenant Governor following the

dismantling of the Huaychao hacienda.175

It should be clear by now that the high esteem in which huaychainos’ held their indigenous authorities cannot be easily explained as a case of child-like natives blindly adoring their patriarchal authorities. As we have seen, villagers recognized and legitimized the power of these local leaders because of the crucial role that they played in preserving and reproducing the social, political, and cultural fabric of the community. In

the absence of a strong state structure in the Iquichano punas, huaychainos relied heavily

on their indigenous leaders to maintain internal order through a flawed but effective

system of local justice. Nor was this the first time in their history that peasants from the

zone turned to the grassroots to maintain public order. As historian Cecilia Méndez

174 ARA, CSJ-JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1958, 13 expedientes), Exp. 47, “Instrucción contra Bernabé Huaylla por el delito de homicidio,” Manifestación de Modesta Morales (6 Agosto 1958); Manifestación del inculpado Bernabé Huaylla (6 August 1958); Manifestación de Pablo Quispe (6 August 1958); Autopsia sobre la muerte de la hija sin nombre de Modesta Huamán (11 August 1958).

175 ASH, 1979, Nombramiento de Teniente Gobernador de Huaychao (12 January 1979); Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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illustrates, Iquichano peasants created their own extralegal administrative government

during the nineteenth century, following Peru’s political independence from Spain. From their headquarters at the nearby Uchuraccay hacienda, peasant leaders did everything from collecting tithes, to organizing communal works projects, to administering justice.

This parallel justice system settled local disputes involving land, authority, theft, and sexual conduct, proving in many ways to be “more popular in reach than the courts of the

Patria.”176 Although huaychainos today have very little to say of this centuries-old

system, its striking resemblance to the local system of authority and justice described

above leads one to the likely conclusion that remnants of the system described by

Méndez remained in place in twentieth-century Huaychao.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

As this chapter has shown, internal conflict was as common in Andean

communities as anywhere else. Even when they were equal in terms of race, class, and geographic origin, indigenous peasants still create hierarchies of power. In Huaychao, the hegemony of local authorities prevailed over that of social and moral deviants. In fact, villagers legitimized the rule of the former largely because of their ability to repress the latter through a locally, customarily established system of justice. Now, at times the power of huaychaino authorities was a source of conflict. For the most part, however, the moral majority in Huaychao succeeded in displacing abusive, unjust, or immoral leaders from public office. In short, huaychaínos turned to this grassroots system to uphold public order during a time of structural change in which they could not count on the

176 Méndez, The Plebeian Republic, ch. 6, quote from p. 165.

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Peruvian state to do the job. By contrast, deviants in Chuschi held the upper hand in the intra-comunero power struggle precisely because of their ability to disregard morally and culturally established codes of conduct with respect to age, authority, sexual behavior, paternalism, gender relations, and communal citizenship. Their rise to power was a direct result of a local crisis of justice and it created a crisis in public order. As we will see in the following chapter, a main reason for these crises in Chuschi is that indigenous chuschinos did not control local political power.

Chapter Two: Dictators of the Consejo, Kings of the Hacienda

Race and Class

“Tell us another one!” I insisted as Huaychao native Narciso Huamán poured

himself another teacup full of aguardiente. When he finished his drink, he poured the

residue onto the dirt floor with a swift fling of the wrist and handed me the cup and

bottle. “Salud, compadre,” he said, handing me the drink. I lifted the cup and repeated,

“Cheers,” pouring myself a teaspoon’s worth of the warm cane liquor. Most days,

Narciso, an Evangelical comunero in his thirties, would decline an invitation to drink

alcohol since it conflicts with his religious views. This night was special, however, as I

had just been brought into his kinship network by cutting his nephew’s hair in a

compadrazgo ceremony; tonight, abstinence took a back seat to tradition. I turned to

Julián, who was sitting next to me in the circle, and repeated the ritual. Satisfied with the

level of participation that Julián and I were displaying in the libation ceremony, Narciso

decided to amuse us with one more story. “Very well, I’ll tell you a story that my father

told me when I was little[.]” He went on to tell a couple more stories about honest

campesino heroes who had rare encounters with strict yet benevolent kings. Narciso told

the stories in Quechua, without a tape-recorder, and after a night of heavy drinking, so I

had trouble keeping up. After he made several references to a hacendado, I realized that

I was completely lost, so I asked for clarification in Spanish: “Where did the hacendado

come from?” Narciso appeared as confused by my question as I had been with his tale,

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so I got more specific: “I mean, I don’t get it. Is there a hacendado in the kingdom, too?”

Narciso smiled at my ignorance: “The hacendado is the king, compadre.”1

This chapter analyzes relations of power between indigenous comuneros and mestizo vecinos in Chuschi and Huaychao before the Shining Path uprising. I demonstrate that the interactions between Chuschi’s indigenous and mestizo residents contrasted starkly with those of Huaychao. Indigenous peasants in Huaychao did not perceive these power-laden relationships as threatening to their way of life. Like the kings in Narciso’s stories, huaychainos remembered their erstwhile estate owners as tyrannical but paternalistic, stern but fair. By contrast, in Chuschi the actions, behaviors, and attitudes of mestizo notables not only violated peasants’ moral expectations for non- indigenous Andean power holders, but they also failed to adhere to culturally established codes of conduct. To indigenous chuschinos, members of the mestizo elite were more concerned with consolidating their political and economic power within the community than with fulfilling their inherent paternalistic obligations, creating what many comuneros perceived as a local crisis of authority. We now turn to these race and class relations in pre-insurgency Chuschi.

CHUSCHI’S QALAS

Drawing from the ethnographic research she conducted in the late 1960s and early

1970s, Billie Jean Isbell argues that there were two essential social groups in Chuschi: the

comuneros and the qalakuna, or qalas. The categories carried specific racial, social, and

1 Field Notes, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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cultural underpinnings. Isbell addresses the racial implications of the two terms: “In

Chuschi, Indians define themselves as comuneros. Mestizos call themselves vecinos, but

the comuneros call mestizos qalas, or ‘naked ones.’”2 Thus, indigenous peasants used

the Quechua word “qala,” which also means “stripped” or “peeled,” has a racial

connotation, referring to anyone who appeared phenotypically non-indigenous, whose indigenous features had been “stripped” or “peeled” from their physical bodies. As Isbell notes, though, “Wealth is another criterion for vecino membership,”3 meaning that the

term also had a clear class element, denoting non-peasants.

But the social and racial opposition of the two groups also had strong cultural

undertones. On one extreme were “the comuneros, or communal members of the village,

who participate in the prestige hierarchy of the varayoqs, wear traditional dress, and

speak Quechua,” and on the other extreme of the cultural spectrum were the qalas, “who

are Spanish speaking, western dressed, foreign nonparticipants in communal life.”4

Qalas also exhibited an “outward orientation to the Peruvian nation,” which inclined comuneros to label them “foreigners,” regardless of whether they were actually born in

Chuschi.5 Foreigners or not, most qalas claimed residency in or near the community, and

the physical location of their homes further distinguished them from comuneros:

“Vecinos, without exception, live on or near the village plaza, where all things foreign

are located—the municipal and district governmental offices, the stores, the schools, and

2 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 70.

3 Ibid., 72.

4 Ibid., 68.

5 Ibid., 73, 70-71.

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the church. …In contrast, the comunero’s residence in one of the two barrios determines

his affiliation with the dual prestige hierarchy.”6 Isbell maintains that the most important

cultural characteristic of a qala was “the negation of membership in the commune with

all the attendant obligations,” writing, “Obligatory positions are not held; reciprocal aid is

not utilized, but rather laborers are paid with cash. In short, vecinos do not define

themselves as Chuschinos, nor do comuneros so define them[.]”7 By this definition, then,

Quechua-speaking, Chuschi-born campesinos who had consciously “peeled off their indigenous identity” by disassociating with native people and practices could have been

considered qalas.8 Accordingly, some of the indigenous figures discussed in the previous

chapter at times could pass for qalas because they shunned many indigenous cultural

expectations, values, and practices even though they might otherwise be considered

“racially” indigenous.

Anthropologist Orin Starn criticizes Isbell for her insistence on the inward orientation of indigenous chuschinos and their binary opposition to the village’s mestizos.

He argues:

Cultural identity in To Defend Ourselves appears as a matter of preservation. Despite change, villagers had conserved their distinctly Andean traditions, ‘maintain[ing] the underlying order of their society and cosmology.’ …Thus Isbell devoted most of To Defend Ourselves to Chuschi’s comuneros. The town’s large mestizo population appears only in the brief passages that mark them as evil foils to the peasant. Many of the mestizos must have spoken Quechua, a language common among not

6 Ibid., 71.

7 Ibid., 73. My archival and ethnographic investigations have led me to the conclusion that qalakuna actually did identify themselves as chuschinos because doing so legitimized their dominion within the community.

8 Ibid., 71.

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only rural people but the middle classes in the Ayacucho region. Some were third-generation Chuschinos. But Isbell’s use of the ‘natives’…encompassed only the comuneros. Peasants became the only real Andeans in Chuschi. …It was precisely a consequence of their emphasis on the isomorphism of Andean traditions that anthropologists tended to ignore the fluid and often ambiguous quality of Andean personal identity. The typology of Indian, cholo, and mestizo suggested three separate spheres of personhood. This contravened the far less clear-cut experience of hundreds of thousands of highland-born people.

Challenging scholars to avoid the pitfalls of “Andeanism,” the Andean equivalent of

Edward Said’s notion of “Orientalism,” Starn argues for “an understanding of modern

Andean identities as dynamic, syncretic, and sometimes ambiguous.” Starn finds Isbell’s

unwillingness to recognize this aspect of chuschino consciousness particularly unsettling,

for it inhibited her from recognizing the political alliances between local comuneros and

mestizo “outsiders” that made the Shining Path rebellion possible.9 In recent years,

historians have confirmed this viewpoint, demonstrating that indigenous peasants in

Ayacucho were quite attuned to political developments beyond the community level

before the Shining Path upheaval.10

Drawing from oral interviews, ethnographic field work, and close analysis of the contemporaneous historical record, this chapter recognizes the merits of both the Isbell and Starn arguments. On the one hand, Isbell’s assertion that indigenous and mestizo chuschinos preferred to maintain their social distance from one another appears accurate.

On the other hand, this preference was little more than that, for the dynamics and exigencies of community life required indigenous campesinos and mestizo notables to

9 Orin Starn, “Missing the Revolution: Anthropologists and the War in Peru,” in Cultural Anthropology 6, no. 3 (February 1991): 64-5, esp. 69-70.

10 See Heilman, “By Other Means”; Méndez, The Plebeian Republic; Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

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interact with one another on a daily basis. Far from being mutually exclusive, the two

groups depended on one another. This interdependence was more than economic,

although economic factors were important. Vecinos’ local hegemony hinged on

indigenous chuschinos’ recognition of their legitimacy. Conversely, indigenous peasants

were willing to concede to the qalas’ local dominion provided that they met their

culturally-and morally-informed standards for non-indigenous power holders. The result

was a mutually—although disproportionately—beneficial and dependent power

relationship predicated on indigenous peasants’ cultural views regarding race, class, and

gender—a sort of “culturally defined social pact.”

Village Political Structure

As Isbell notes, a two-tiered political system operated in Chuschi before the

Shining Path uprising. The first was the civil-religious prestige hierarchy used by

comuneros and headed by the indigenous authorities known as varayoqs or envarados,

which I discussed in the previous chapter. This chapter focuses on the second system: the

district level bureaucracy of the Peruvian state, known as the Consejo

Administrativo/Municipal (Administrative/Municipal Council). Particularly before the

1968 Agrarian Reform, the local administrative body was almost exclusively the realm of

Chuschi’s vecino class—very few illiterate comuneros were able to break the race barrier

of local politics. These vecino officials were appointed by and responded directly to the

Cangallo Subprefect, but they also communicated indirectly with the departmental

Prefect and other branches of the Peruvian state. Heading this system were, in order of

least to highest rank, the Lieutenant Governor, Governor, Lieutenant Mayor, and Mayor.

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Together with the local Juez de Paz (Justice of the Peace), these officials were

responsible for making and enforcing national and district laws. After the military coup

that established the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces as the supreme

executive power in Peru, these officials were elected democratically by all married

villagers, qala and indigenous. This resulted in some indigenous peasants breaking the

race barrier, but since final approval for appointments still went through the provincial

Subprefect, most posts still remained mestizo-controlled.

The main way that qala leaders secured their local hegemony throughout the

period under study was thus by prohibiting indigenous villagers from infiltrating the

district administration. Isbell observes that indigenous peasants preferred their customary

authority structure to that of the Peruvian state. Yet it is worth emphasizing that district

leaders benefited from their dark-skinned neighbors’ confinement to this traditional administrative body, for while it implied a degree of social prestige, it was also directly subordinate to the district bureaucracy in the eyes of the Peruvian state, rendering it politically inconsequential outside of the village. Nor was the civil-religious hierarchy

completely autonomous, for qala officials did their best to ensure that the indigenous political structure remained directly subordinate to, rather than separate from, their own.

The Village Patriarch

Humberto Ascarza Borda was one qala leader who advocated the indigenous hierarchy’s subordination to that of the local state. It is unclear whether Humberto

Ascarza was a native chuschino. When asked to state his place of origin during legal proceedings, Ascarza stated that he was a “natural y vecino de la localidad [native and

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resident of the locality]” of Chuschi.11 The earliest records I have found on the qala

indicate that he was a member of the Battalion of the South’s Fourth Company in Puno,

where he received his license as an officer of the Civil Guard (Cuerpo de Salud, later the

Guardia Civil) in 1931.12 What is certain is that by the following year, Ascarza had

already inserted himself into Chuschi’s political hierarchy, taking a three-year term as

Governor.13 In 1937, his successor Nemesio Retamoso stepped down following

allegations that he had used the services of the community’s indigenous varayoqs for

personal interests, making way for Ascarza to reassume the political post.14 In 1944,

Ascarza was appointed Juez de Paz of Chuschi, a term which began the following year.15

Ascarza finally reached the top of the political hierarchy when he accepted the title of

Mayor in 1950, a post that he would retain until 1954.16 By then, it was clear to many

chuschinos that Ascarza had created what his political rivals called “a dictatorship in the

Consejo.”17

11 Ascarza consistently stated this when called to testify in legal matters. See, for example, ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, “Instrucción contra Humberto Ascarza y otros por el delito de peculado,” Manifestación de Humberto Ascarza (11 November 1953).

12 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Certificado de cumplimiento del Guardia Humberto Ascarza (15 May 1931).

13 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Nombramiento de Gobernador de Chuschi (22 January 1932).

14 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Resolución sobre el reemplazo del Gobernador de Chuschi (17 August 1937).

15 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Nombramiento del Juez de Paz de Chuschi (29 December 1944).

16 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Copia del nombramiento del Alcalde de Chuschi (14 December 1954).

17 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

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Ascarza did everything in his power to ensure that Chuschi’s indigenous leaders

submitted to his authority. From his position as Governor in 1939, Azcarza drafted a

letter to the Cangallo Subprefect charging that Antonio Micuylla and Eusebio Galindo,

two varayoqs from the pago of Uchuirre, had been “completely disobedient,” refusing to

“carry out or mind the orders that they have been given[.]”18 He insisted that in order to run his office effectively and in the best interests of the Peruvian state, he needed to be able to count on the unconditional disposition of his varayoq “auxiliaries.” According to

Ascarza, these particular envarados “need[ed] to be brought before my office and punished publically [castigados ejemplarmente] for being people accustomed to disregarding authorities such as [myself and] my predecessors[.]”19 Just what had these

indigenous authorities done that was so subversive? It appears that Ascarza himself was

not exactly sure at the time, but over the following week he kept close watch on his subordinates to watch for any suspicious behavior. He then penned the Subprefect a

follow-up letter confirming his suspicions that local varayoqs had been holding “secret

meetings” to plot against the district authorities. The Governor accused two additional

varayoqs of “instigating” and “corrupting” the indigenous people and “demoralizing the

public order.” As with the two envarados mentioned in the previous letter, these

instigators deserved to have appropriate sanctions imposed on them.20 That same day,

18 ARA, SC, Caja 13, Of. Chuschi 1939, Carta de Humberto Ascarza al Subprefecto (4 July 1939).

19 Ibid.

20 ARA, SC, Caja 13, Of. Chuschi 1939, Carta de Humberto Ascarza al Subprefecto (10 July 1939).

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Azcarza reported to the Subprefect that he had managed to capture Micuylla.21 Nearly two weeks passed without a reply from the provincial bureaucrat, prompting the impatient Governor to send an urgent message to the provincial diplomat reiterating his predicament. “[T]his subject [Micuylla] is not only insubordinate,” Ascarza maintained,

“but he is also scandalous, as he lives with another woman [and has] abandoned his wife[.]” He added, “[Micuylla] is a person of poor character who corrupts his fellow compañeros. …[He] even goes around inciting the honorable envarados. …For this reason, I request the removal of the accused for [the sake of] the government of the other envarados.”22 Two days later, on 24 July 1939, the Subprefect ordered the varayoq to

resign, confirming Ascarza’s allegation that Micuylla had “disturb[ed] the public

order…by disregarding the orders of the legally recognized authorities.” Micuylla could

not be held entirely responsible for his actions, however, for he was, according to the

Subprefect, an “indígena unfamiliar with the laws of defense and internal security of the

republic.”23

But indigenous chuschinos were familiar with the law, and it did not take long for

them to conclude that Ascarza had broken it. On 14 February 1944, forty-four villagers writing on behalf of their illiterate compoblanos penned a letter to the Subprefect objecting to a recent request by Ascarza and other qala officials to graze their livestock on the communal lands of Totorapampa, a couple of kilometers outside of the village.

21 ARA, SC, Caja 13, Of. Chuschi 1939, Carta de Humberto Ascarza al Subprefecto sobre la captura del envarado Antonio Micuylla (10 July 1939).

22 ARA, SC, Caja 13, Of. Chuschi 1939, Carta de Humberto Ascarza al Subprefecto (22 July 1939).

23 ARA, SC, Caja 13, Of. Chuschi 1939, Resolución del Subprefecto de Cangallo (4 July 1939).

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The lands, they assured the Subprefect, “have existed since time immemorial so that the

region’s indigenous comuneros, without exception, can graze their animals, solely and

exclusively, during the harvest season,” adding, “This ancient custom has always been

respected due to the immediate action of the…varayos [sic] de campo, who…impose sanctions on free grazers.”24 The petitioners informed the Subprefect that some vecinos had already begun grazing their animals on the plot, destroying barley, potato, and broad bean crops along the way. Whereas in the past the varayoqs had succeeded in quelling such problems, the petitioners admitted that this time around “the intervention of the varayos [sic] de campo has been ineffective, why, the measures they have taken haven’t been respected at all, having been met instead with sarcastic reprisals from those people.”25 In making such a claim, the petitioners seemed to imply that the authority of

the indigenous authorities, which had previously served as a moral and symbolic check

against the power of the qala elite, had lost its ability to administer justice effectively.

For the indigenous petitioners, the actions undertaken by the qalakuna

compromised the community’s public order: “The purpose of the present petition is, then,

wholesome and honorable. …As such, the only thing it pursues is the reestablishment of

a custom that benefits the community, whose members must live in the most perfect

harmony and strict communion of interests, as a single man, or better yet, a single family,

as always, eliminating all motives of possible discrepancies or disagreements.”26

Obviously, this highly romanticized language served a specific purpose, perhaps playing

24 ARA, SC, Caja 15, Of. Chuschi 1944, Carta al Subprefecto sobre conflicto de tierras (14 February 1944).

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

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more to state discourses on “Indianness” than about actual experiences on the ground.

Such statements should not be dismissed as mere rhetoric, however. While indigenous

communities such as Chuschi were far from harmonious, the above passage represented

an ideal situation, an expectation that custmary authority and justice would serve as a

moral check against qala abuses and therefore enforce public order within the

community. To the indigenous petitioners, these traditional mechanisms had failed them.

Nor was that all they claimed Ascarza had done. After nearly three decades of

silence, campesino Justiniano Dueñas stepped forward with a confession against his

former employer. He claimed that around 1947, his sister-in-law had left him in charge

of her property in Chuschi while she was away. While living there, he worked for a little

over two years as Ascarza’s peón, “having never received compensation in kind or in

money [con medio o centavo].”27 While grazing his patrón’s animals in the site of Totora

around 1949, one of the mules escaped. Dueñas searched for the animal all around

Chuschi, but could not find it. When Ascarza found out about the incident, he ordered

Dueñas to “travel long distances in search of said animal.”28 Edilberto Llalli, another of

Ascarza’s peones, accompanied Dueñas on his expedition. Llalli remembered that the

two campesinos traveled long distances on foot for days on end without so much as

stopping to eat, for fear of Ascarza’s reprisals. They finally found the donkey in

Yanamote, a town in the district of Tambo, in La Mar Province. Llalli recalled, “During

all of our travels on foot in search of the Mule, [Ascarza] didn’t compensate [us] with as

27 APETT, Of. Chuschi, Declaración de Justiniano Dueñas sobre el hallazgo de una mula perteneciente al Sr. Humberto Ascarza Borda (3 April 1975).

28 Ibid.

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much as a kernel of corn[,] let alone money.”29 Yet even after finding the mule, Ascarza

continued to mistreat Dueñas. The former yanacona (migrant laborer) explained: “[T]he

abusive Humberto Ascarza Borda[,] using the pretext of the lost mule, evicted [me] and

kicked [me] cleanly out of [my sister-in-law’s] home without even remunerating [me] for

my two years’ service, and he even expropriated all the land of my sister-in-law doña

[Mrs., Ma’am] Apolinaria Fernandez, who had left me in charge of the chacras of

[P]oruchuco, Sallachacra and Solar along with the house.” Due to “all the abuses that

don Humberto submitted me to,” Dueñas decided to leave Chuschi in search of better

subsistence elsewhere. Without going into further detail, Dueñas added “That it’s

Humberto Ascarza’s fault that my wife is now immobile [and] invalid.”30 Apolinaria

Fernandez herself later testified that the property in question had belonged to her mother

at the time that Ascarza evicted Dueñas from it and that, after forcing his peón from the

property, Ascarza, “employing all the traits of Casicasgo [sic] and Gamonalismo,” seized her mother’s house and corn fields and confiscated her belongings.31

After completing two consecutive mayoral terms, Ascarza sought reelection in

1954. His qala godson, Manuel Dueñas, also sought gubernatorial reelection. Upon

learning this, eighty-one heads of household joined with the district’s qala authorities in

29 APETT, Of. Chuschi, Declaración de Edilberto Llalli Quispe (Circa 3 April 1975).

30 APETT, Of. Chuschi, Declaración de Justiniano Dueñas sobre el hallazgo de una mula perteneciente al Sr. Humberto Ascarza Borda (3 April 1975).

31 APETT, Of. Chuschi, Denuncia de María Apolinaria Fernández ante el Defensor de Oficio de la Oficina de defensa communal de Cangallo (25 June 1975). Cacicazgo and Gamonalismo refer to the abusive dominion of regional strongmen known as Caciques and Gamonales.

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drafting a letter to the departmental Prefect objecting to their candidacy on several

grounds.32

For starters, they declared, the two were incompetent when it came to leading

communal works projects. To be sure, Ascarza had exhibited “personal sacrifice” by

volunteering to participate in some of the state-initiated projects to improve the local

infrastructure, but villagers interpreted the official’s decision to work pro bono as a

complete “waste of energy,” for the projects never materialized.33 The petitioners maintained that Dueñas’s record in leading public works was equally deplorable. The

governor, they said, had once tried to turn public opinion in his favor by taking on a

project that would have created two short communal roadways. The only problem was

that he attempted the construction “with no previous research or blueprints from an

Engineer.” Dueñas’s lack of preparation, they continued, only drew labor away from

other public works, such as the state-initiated highway construction.34 Together, Dueñas

and his godfather “haven’t left behind a single functional public works project in all the

years they have held the offices that they now seek to reoccupy.” This lack of leadership

left comuneros vulnerable, for it bordered on the “inhumane.” A case in point was the

qalas’ mishandling of the effort to replace the wicker bridge that connected Chuschi and

Quispillaccta. Romualda Galindo escaped with minor injuries after she stumbled on the

withered bridge. Leoncio Tucno was not so fortunate. In December 1953, he died while

attempting to cross the Chuschi River on a flimsy pole. Had the two authorities delivered

32 AGN, MI, PA 1954, Petición de los vecinos de Chuschi al Prefecto (3 April 1954).

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

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on their promise to repair the bridge, such tragedies could have been avoided.35 To the indigenous petitioners, the mestizo rulers had failed in their most important paternalistic duty: to keep their constituents, particularly women such as Romualda Galindo, out of harm’s way.

The litigants had a theory as to why the political bosses were so negligent when it came to the organization of communal labor. “Dueñas,” they informed the Prefect, “has more than anything used his post as Governor to launch his businesses and private activities, rather than supporting the labors and works of the State.”36 To indigenous

chuschinos, then, the qala leader seemed more concerned with using his political power

to consolidate his economic interests than with meeting their implicit expectations that he

protect, guide, and provide for the collective.

Chuschinos suspected that Ascarza’s economic aspirations had gotten in the way of his implicit duties as well. The two-time Mayor stepped down amidst the controversy, but not before his political rivals, led by the thirty-five-year-old qala Governor Ernesto

Jaime Miranda, brought multiple embezzlement charges against him. In particular, they wanted to know what had happened to the balance of 4,405 soles that the Mayor had inherited from the Consejo. Jaime and company charged that the former Mayor had intentionally mishandled yet another public works project with the purpose of appropriating the surplus for personal use. In 1952 Ascarza initiated a project to pump potable drinking water into the village. He had contracted a mason named Ambrosio

Estrada for the job, which entailed the instillation of three cement pipes designed to pump

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

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water into the village from a spring a couple of blocks away. The job was ill-conceived

from the beginning, they maintained, noting that the “incompetent” Estrada was “brute

and imperfect when utilizing the cement, stirring the cement mass with a round wooden

reed or vara, as if such hideous conduct would make the water run.”37 According to the

plaintiffs, only two of the three pipes ever worked, and even those only worked for about

twenty days before giving out permanently. The plaintiffs suspected that Ascarza had

deliberately botched the job, which they described as “a total failure,” as part of an

elaborate ploy to appropriate money from the community surplus. Ascarza’s critics were

certain that such a makeshift job could not have possibly cost the more than 4,000 soles

that the Mayor claimed he had spent on it. Nevertheless, he still found it necessary to

borrow an additional 500 soles from the cofradía of the Church of Chuschi “under the pretext that he needed [it to purchase] food for the mason who constructed the aqueducts for the potable [water] job.”38

Nor did the supplicants believe that this was the first time that the former Mayor

had appropriated funds from the communal account. Recently, Ascarza had taken

municipal monies for a land dispute between the community of Chuschi and the

neighboring Del Solar family estate.39 Even after taking money from the municipal

account and pocketing the 600 soles fine that Emilio Del Solar paid the community after

losing the legal battle, the official felt that he had not been sufficiently recompensed for

37 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncio al Juez Instructor contra el ex-Alcalde de Chuschi (28 June 1954); Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

38 Ibid.

39 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncio al Juez Instructor contra el ex-Alcalde de Chuschi (28 June 1954).

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taking charge of the community’s legal defense. According to Ascarza’s denouncers, it was at this point that he proposed to appropriate the communal lands of Totora as collateral for his protagonism in the community’s legal battle. When the comuneros rejected this proposition outright, he decided to usurp the communal lands of Chillihua— a potato pasture of about thirty village blocks long and twenty wide—as compensation for the 700 soles that he believed the community still owed him.40

According to his accusers, Ascarza took more than just money from the community. He also required comuneros from four separate barrios to donate one sheep per week “to feed the mason” during the nine weeks that he worked on the water project.

They calculated that the mason could not possibly have consumed more than one sheep per week, which left upwards of eighteen sheep unaccounted for. They feared that he had claimed them for himself, just as he had done with the dozen bags of cement that were leftover from the project, which he used instead to pave his own house.41 And when he was not busy helping himself, he was providing gifts to his family and friends at the community’s expense. For example, chuschinos periodically auctioned off a portion of animals to augment the communal reserves. Yet as Ernesto Jaime testified, in November of 1952 the Mayor broke with “custom” and sold the animals for personal profit. It was right about this time, Jaime added, when Ascarza’s godson Manuel Dueñas curiously added a mare to his personal litter; the Mayor, for his part, added several horses and cattle

40 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Ernesto Jaime Miranda (11 November 1953); Denuncio al Juez Instructor contra el ex-Alcalde de Chuschi (28 June 1954); Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

41 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953); Manifestación de Ernesto Jaime Miranda (11 November 1953).

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to his own. That same year, Ascarza sold Dueñas and [wife] Romualda Chipana

territories where other comuneros had been grazing their cattle “since time

immemorial.”42 According to Jaime and company, Dueñas was not the only one of

Ascarza’s relatives to benefit from his tenure as Mayor. Years earlier, former Mayor

Nemesio Retamoso had donated land to the Fiscal Boy’s School of Chuschi. Upon becoming Mayor, Humberto allowed his sister Irene to lay claim to a portion of the school property.43

Ascarza’s accusers also denounced him for imposing arbitrary taxes on villagers

for basic administrative services. For instance, he charged villagers five to ten soles to:

expedite birth and marriage certificates in the Civil Registry; hold wedding ceremonies; and obtain licenses for civil posts. He even went as far as to charge mayordomos (fiesta hosts, sponsors) fees of up to ten soles for the right to hold ritual celebrations in the

community. Such “municipal taxes” were not only arbitrary and illegal, they charged, but they also went directly into the Mayor’s pocket.44

Embedded in the multiple charges of fraud was the accusation that Ascarza had

mistreated Chuschi’s indigenous varayoqs. “In Chuschi there are about twenty

envarados [dedicated] to public service,” Jaime and his collaborators explained, “The accused, making use of his inauguration as Mayor, made them serve him personally

[through:] domestic service in his house, agricultural labor on his chacras, and running

42 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Ernesto Jaime Miranda (11 November 1953).

43 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

44 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncio al Juez Instructor contra el ex-Alcalde de Chuschi (28 June 1954); Denuncio ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953); Manifestación de Ernesto Jaime Miranda (11 November 1953).

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errands as far away as the city of Ayacucho and other places, without so much as giving them enough to eat, [instead giving them] just a little bit of coca [leaf].”45 Ascarza, they

added later, had the civil-religious authorities serving him “free of charge, for his

[personal] benefit…day and night.”46 Several acting and former varayoqs also stepped forward to testify with respect to this last charge. Chuschi’s chief varayoq, the Envarado

Mayor Elías Minas Huaycha confirmed that his indigenous authorities had worked in the

Mayor’s fields once a year, “in accordance to custom,” but that they received fifty cents per day in addition to food and coca leaves.47 Thirty-year-old indigenous farmer Juan

Quispe Cusihuamán also testified that he and the other envarados were “all under the

command of the Mayor Humberto Ascarza” and that “in addition to their service in

public works, they also provided personal service on the Mayor’s chacras or as muleteers

[between Chuschi and] the city of Ayacucho and sometimes in carrying leña [firewood]

to his house.” Quispe added that the Mayor compensated the varayoqs for their services,

however, offering them fifty cents for their work in the fields and a couple of soles for

trips to Ayacucho, in addition to food.48

These indigenous authorities implied that although Humberto Ascarza obliged them to work for him, he did so by respecting the culturally defined social pact of reciprocity between indigenous and non-indigenous authorities. The accusations lodged

45 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncio al Juez Instructor contra el ex-Alcalde de Chuschi (28 June 1954);.

46 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. N. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncio ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

47 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Elías Minas Huaycha (12 November 1953).

48 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Juan Quispe Cusihuamán (13 November 1953).

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by Jaime and other community leaders, on the other hand, stressed Ascarza’s failure to

compensate the varayoq laborers through food, coca leaf, or cash. No one, not even

Ascarza himself, disputed that he had commissioned the indigenous authorities to serve

him personally. Upon comparing these statements, we might be inclined to take the

varayoq witnesses at their word. After all, it was they who had provided service to the

Mayor. However, reading on to the end of Quispe’s declaration, we discover that the

illiterate farmer placed his fingerprint on the document only after it was “read [to him] by

don Humberto Ascarza[,] who served as a witness [to his oral testimony.]”49 That is,

Quispe’s declaration was presided over by the very person who stood accused of abusing

him and his fellow varayoqs! Taken together with a statement later issued by Jaime to

the judge charging that Ascarza’s friends and relatives had “threatened to take vengeance

on anyone who declared the truth against the accused, that they would prosecute each and

every one of them and seize their goods [and] put them in jail,”50 the varayoqs’

testimonies lose credibility.

The allegations brought forth by Ascarza’s qala foes launched a lengthy criminal investigation for which the former Mayor addressed each of the charges brought against him. It was true, he testified, that he oversaw the irrigation project. However, it had been determined in a municipal session “that all the residents of the locale needed to concur obligatorily to the job, under penalty of a fine, receiving only their ration of coca billed to

the Municipality.” At the time, Ascarza thought that the project had been carried out

49 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Juan Quispe Cusihuamán (13 November 1953). Emphasis added.

50 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición de Ernesto Jaime al Sr, Juez Instructor (28 October 1954).

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successfully; he “didn’t realize that the project had been poorly constructed.”

Nevertheless, the price for the water works exceeded the original budget, which is why he had to do what was necessary to ensure that he was reimbursed financially.51 As for the

allegation that he had sold communal lands to his family and friends, Ascarza explained

that it had long been a tradition in Chuschi for recently married couples to be given communal estates in usufruct. He had “never once sold terrain” to people like Manuel

Dueñas since the lands in question technically still belonged to the municipality.52

Turning to the accusation that he had imposed arbitrary taxes on comuneros for various civil proceedings, Ascarza assured his interrogators that these were “voluntary” donations that even he, as Mayor, had given from time to time.53 With respect to the litigation in

the Land Court between the community and the Del Solar family estate, Ascarza

explained that in the absence of a communal attorney, he, as Mayor, had assumed the

financial and legal responsibilities of defending his village. He added that he had only

prohibited comuneros from grazing on the terrain of Huicsoccocha—a small plot within

the larger terrain of Chillihua—until he recovered the 700 soles he had spent in legal

fees.54 When asked to explain the charge that he had taken money and animals from the

different barrios for personal use, he answered that not only had the donations gone

directly to the contractor of the irrigation project, but that he had the records to prove it.

He went on to say that he had indeed paved a small corridor in his house, but that he had

51 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Manifestación de Humberto Ascarza (11 November 1953).

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

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done so with two bags of cement that he purchased earlier in Ayacucho City; the twelve

bags of pavement leftover from the water works went directly towards paving Chuschi’s

Casa Consistorial (Town Council office).55 Ascarza also denied the charge that he had

sold a portion of Chuschi’s Boys School to his sister. On the contrary, his sister had

donated a portion of her own terrain to the school for the construction of a playground.56

The matter of the varayoqs required a bit more explaining. Ascarza told his interrogators that each May, during the Fiesta de la Cruz, chuschinos elected ten

“Solteros” (bachelors) to service the community as varayoqs. Their jobs included: assisting the Municipal Council, inspecting communal pastures, and cleaning irrigation ditches. As compensation for their service, the Municipal Council furnished the varayoqs with coca leaves. He admitted that from time to time he had put these varayoqs to work in his own fields. However, he swore that he always paid them no less than fifty cents and up to two soles per day, in addition to feeding them and giving them coca leaf.57

Ascarza saw no harm in that.

Unfortunately for Ascarza, his foes did not share this conviction. On New Year’s

Eve 1953, twenty-nine qalas and comuneros drafted a petition to the Cangallo Subprefect in which they iterated the implications of the ex-Mayor’s actions:

As is natural and human, the accused Mayor, has used his preponderant influences as town Alcalde [Mayor] and Gamonal against the unhappy indígenas, victims of his extortion, who in fear of the accused haven’t had the liberty of action to express the truth about the facts, [instead being forced to] hide and warp the truth...[as was the case] when the [former]

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

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Governor don Manuel Dueñas, the Mayor’s famed godson, assembled the people and ordered them not to compromise the Alcalde.58

Here, we see the former Mayor described as a gamonal, a derogatory term to denote

abusive Andean power holders. This sentiment echoed that of the original denunciation

in which Jaime and thirty other notables and comuneros told the departmental Prefect that

Humberto Ascarza had essentially created a “dictatorship in the Consejo.”59

In 1955, with Ascarza standing trial in his embezzlement hearing, the illiterate indígena Paula Quispe came forward with an additional allegation against the power

holder. With the help of a scribe, Quispe informed the Prefect that two years prior,

Ascarza had seized Patapata, a small landholding of about one yugada owned by the plaintiff and her daughter Aquilina in the lowlands outside the village. Taking advantage of his political office as Mayor, Ascarza had declared that Quispe’s land fell under the jurisdiction of the municipality and sold it to Manuel Dueñas.60 Quispe did not recall the

amount of the transaction, but a subsequent police investigation determined that the

Mayor had sold the terrain to his godson for the record-low price of 100 soles, just 5% of

its market value of 2,000 soles.61 Quispe confessed that she and her daughter would have reported the incident sooner, but that as a poor indígena she did not have the means to seek legal action. More importantly, with Ascarza still in office, they were “terrified by

58 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncia ante el Subprefecto contra Humberto Ascarza (31 December 1953).

59 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra el Alcalde de Chuschi (20 August 1953).

60 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Instrucción contra el Alcalde de Chuschi por el delito de abuso de autoridad i usurpción, Petición al Prefecto (13 April 1955).

61 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Informe del Comandante de Puesto de la Guardia Civil al Subprefecto (12 October 1955).

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his threats,” electing instead to “keep quiet about such a tremendous and unjust situation

and hope that an opportunity would arise to execute our defense.” Now, with Ascarza in

custody, such an opportunity had arisen.62 Quispe hoped that the Mayor would be

brought to justice for his actions, for this was not the first time he had abused his political

power. On the contrary, “[His abuses] are frequent and his allies [agentes provocadores] are many, and in general they are creating real social calamities, putting at risk the tranquility of the residents of the province of Cangallo.”63

Quispe probably felt she had a strong case against Ascarza. For starters, the

police report confirmed that Ascarza had sold the territory to Dueñas on 27 September

1951, the same day that he renewed his mayoral appointment.64 In addition to this

circumstantial evidence, two of Quispe’s campesino neighbors testified that Patapata had

remained in Quispe’s possession for some thirty years prior to the transaction committed

by Ascarza, whom they each described as one of the Chuschi’s “most visible vecinos.”

One of the witnesses testified that “the whole town” knew that Ascarza sold his godson

lands that had belonged to Quispe.65 Notwithstanding this evidence, the judge ruled in

the qala’s favor, explaining: “[T]here is no proof whatsoever that establishes the guilt of

the accused. …Therefore…[I] deem that the accused Humberto Ascarza is not

responsible for committing the crimes that Paula Quispe attributes to him, barring further

62 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Petición al Prefecto (13 April 1955).

63 Ibid.

64 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Informe del Comandante de Puesto de la Guardia Civil al Subprefecto (12 October 1955).

65 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Manfestación de Hilario Galindo Núñez (12 October 1955); Manifestación de Narciso Llalli Núñez (12 October 1955).

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evidence.”66 For the time being, Paula Quispe’s hopes of bringing Ascarza to justice for his misdeeds would have to await the court’s verdict in the larger embezzlement case.

The court delivered that verdict on 3 September 1955, some two years after

Chuschi’s qalakuna and comuneros had determined in an open assembly to bring multiple charges against the political boss. The court ruled to absolve Humberto Ascarza of the charges of embezzlement, abuse of authority, and contra la libertad individual

(“against individual liberties”).67 After two years of litigation, Chuschi’s “dictator” and

“gamonal” was a free man. Free, some believed, to continue consolidating his local

power at the expense of the indigenous peasantry. It is likely that rulings such as this one

and the verdict of Paula Quispe’s case against Humberto Ascarza persuaded indigenous

campesinos that the Peruvian penal system, like the customary system headed by the

varayoqs, was ineffective in bringing non-indigenous officials to justice.

Nor did the trial itself deter Ascarza’s political ambitions. After seizing executive

power in 1968, the GRFA established additional administrative positions at the local

level. This included the communal President, for which Ernesto Jaime was elected.

According to village council records, Jaime was discharged in 1975 for being

“considered a suspicious element within the community.”68 While the document did not

detail what he had done specifically to merit this accusation, the fact that Humberto

Ascarza, now in his seventies, replaced Jaime as communal President may explain

66 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1176, Exp. 67, Estimación del Juez Instructor sobre en el caso contra Humberto Ascarza Borda (24 August 1956).

67 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Sentencia en la acusación contra Humberto Ascarza Borda (3 September 1955).

68 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Copia de Acta de la Asamblea Extraordinaria de Chuschi (3 April 1976).

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Jaime’s sudden removal. Given the long-standing power struggle between Jaime and

Ascarza, and given Ascarza’s tenuous political record, it would not be unreasonable to suspect that Ascarza had a hand in ousting his nemesis from public office. The complaint filed by election official Julio Silvestre later that year certainly suggests that such tactics

were not beneath the qala patriarch. At the time, chuschino candidates ran for local

office on “Blue” or “Red” party tickets. On 21 November 1976, Silvestre refused to sign

village council records recognizing his “Blue” party’s concession of the election,

charging:

1.-That President…don Humberto Ascarza Borda, has annulled the ticket that I, was in charge of, [sic] the BLUE ticket. For this reason I decided…to replace the candidates for others, in my authority as official of the Blue ticket.

2.-That, at the moment of the Elections…don Humberto Ascarza Borda, was inciting the comunero voters to vote for the RED ticket, which is the winning ticket.69

Whether or not Ascarza had actually pressured indigenous chuschinos to vote for his

candidates, the fact that he still held public office in 1976, nearly forty-five years after

winning his first nomination in Chuschi, demonstrates the extent of his authority within

the community. Even if Silvestre’s accusations were false, they still served as a public

reminder of the types of things that qala leaders like Ascarza were capable of doing in

order to secure their local dominion.

What we have described here here is a power relationship equivalent to that which

Sinclair Thomson, Sergio Serulnikov, and Nancy Postero have chronicled for Bolivia.

Thomson argues that in eighteenth-century La Paz, “Andean peasants expected their

69 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Copia de Acta de Asamblea Extraordinaria de Chuschi (14 December 1976).

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caciques not only to obey a moral code of economic reciprocity ensuring community

material reproduction…but also…to ‘defend’ and ‘protect’ them from external

aggression and abuse.”70 Serulnikov makes a similar observation for Chayanta during the

same period, stating that indigenous peasants expected their local leaders to adhere to

“traditional forms of reciprocity” and to embody the “collective protest” of the

community when leading legal litigations.71 Serulnikov and Thomson argue that

caciques’ inability to meet Andean villagers’ cultural demands during the second half of

the century created a local “crisis of authority,” or “crisis of domination.”72 Postero draws a parallel conclusion in her study of the indigenous Guaraní in late-twentieth- century Santa Cruz. “When [authority] Don Álvaro abdicated to the [traditional] systems of conflict resolution, in essence refusing to be the strong warrior leader fighting to protect his people, he became suspect to those who needed his intervention and advocacy.” As Postero observes, the internal tensions created by this situation led to a

“crisis of leadership” within the community.73

This same argument can be extended to twentieth-century Chuschi. To many villagers, Humberto Ascarza embodied this local hegemonic crisis. To begin with, he exhibited a general disrespect for the symbolic power of the traditional indigenous authorities. Villagers complained that Ascarza and his vecino cronies were unwilling to

submit to varayoq authority and justice, which had in the past served as a check against

70 Thomson, We Alone will Rule, 137, see also p. 43.

71 Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 36, 51.

72 Thomson, We Alone will Rule, 69-70; Serulnikov, Subverting Colonial Authority, 21.

73 Postero, Now We Are Citizens, ch. 3, quote from p. 111.

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qala abuses. Rather than accepting their social function as public servants and arbiters of communal justice, he demanded their unyielding subordination to his personal command, ordering them to take time away from public service to serve at his personal pleasure. As some argued, he did this without compensating them for their services in cash, food, coca leaf, or beverage, a charge that implied a total disregard for traditional norms of reciprocity. This was not the only instance in which he had neglected his reciprocal obligations as a local power holder. His indigenous peones also complained that he had failed to compensate them for their labor, even when this labor entailed traveling long distances for personal errands. Ascarza’s treatment of his indigenous peones also violated peasants’ moral economy, as evidenced in Justiniano Dueñas’s claim that he had been forced to leave town because he could not maintain a subsistence level while working for Ascarza. Ascarza also tampered with peasants’ moral economy by charging what they perceived to be arbitrary taxes for practices that they had taken for granted.

Ascarza’s taxes on marriage ceremonies and ritual celebrations were not only perceived as an unnecessary economic burden, but they also represented the uncomfortable intervention of a mestizo in indigenous cultural practices.

If, as Ascarza’s opponents put it, peasants saw the community as a “family,” then their authorities were the symbolic “fathers,” responsible for the physical and economic protection and well-being of the comuneros above all else—Ascarza’s blatant self- interest violated the basic principle. To many, he appeared more concerned with consolidating the political and economic capital of himself and his qala friends and family than in safeguarding communal interests. In fact, his personal avarice often came at the expense of the community, as illustrated in the charges that he had embezzled

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communal funds, appropriated communal lands, and seized livestock and resources from individual campesinos. He had even, they alleged, overcharged comuneros for heading up the legal defense of the community against encroaching hacendados. To them, however, it was his duty as a local authority to lead such collective litigations. This was to say nothing of Ascarza’s perceived incompetence as a leader. Time and time again the political boss had failed to organize effective communal works projects that were designed to benefit the community. Ascarza’s negligence, some argued, placed the physical security of villagers at risk, and some held him personally responsible for the injury and death of peasants who had tried to cross the withered bridge that he had failed to fix. In this way, Ascarza had failed in his most important paternalistic duty of protecting villagers.

Ascarza understood the implications of each of these charges. This explains why the defenses he rendered responded mostly to the charges of social and cultural infractions. Recall, for instance, that while he never denied employing the varayoqs for personal services, he insisted that he had supplied them with adequate amounts of coca leaf and food, the implication being that he had respected traditional codes of reciprocity.

It was perhaps because many of the charges were of social and cultural trespasses rather than legal ones that Peruvian courts did not deem him guilty, and despite the large body of evidence against him, Ascarza continued to rule with virtual impunity in the village through the 1970s. This only further supported the growing belief among comuneros that the justice of the Peruvian state, much like that of the traditional varayoqs, had failed to uphold public order and moral authority.

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Other Qala Leaders and the Crisis of Authority

Of course, Humberto Ascarza was just one of many qala leaders. However,

comuneros cast most qala leaders in the same light as Ascarza, indicating that a local

crisis of authority was truly afoot. Rather than go into detail about the social misconduct of each of these authorities—for there were many—I would like to highlight the careers of three individuals who, like Ascarza, embodied this crisis of domination. As we will see in chapter five, each of these authorities became a key figure in the political violence of the 1980s.

The first authority was Felipe Aycha, the local butcher/abigeo “boss” whom we introduced in the previous chapter. The archival record supports the characterizations given to me by chuschinos fifty years later that Felipe Aycha was an authority with a short temper. At around noon on 6 October 1959, Aycha’s thirty-two-year-old sister

Modesta walked into his Governor’s office and told him that she was having marital problems. Modesta did not go into detail about the nature of the dispute when she gave her police deposition, divulging only that it involved both her comunero husband,

Máximo Vilca, and his mother. The case was serious enough for her to track down her

brother and demand that he take action, ignoring her observation that he had been

drinking when she walked in.74 Máximo and his relatives who were present that day

testified that it all began during a libation ceremony to celebrate the cleaning of the

irrigation canals. During the ceremony, the two spouses had an exchange of words that

ended in Modesta storming out of the house. Máximo and his relatives did not seem

74 ARA, SC, Caja 33, Of. Institutos Armados 1959, Manifestación de Modesta Aycha [pseud.] (9 October 1959).

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bothered by her dramatic exit, for they were still consuming cane liquor and chicha when

the equally intoxicated Governor barged into the home wielding a verga, a whip

fashioned from a bull’s penis, accompanied by his Lieutenant Governor. Máximo and his

family claimed that the Governor immediately began punching and kicking them and

striking them with the verga; he even roughed up Máximo’s mother. The authorities then

left and returned with more subordinates and arrested Máximo and company, placing

them in the village holding cell.75 Of course, Governor Felipe and Lieutenant Governor

Víctor Cayllahua claimed that they, not Máximo’s family, were the real victims in the altercation. The two swore that they had gone over to Máximo’s residence to resolve the

issue peacefully but that they were forced to retreat after Máximo’s male and female

relatives began hurling rocks at them and assailing them with punches and kicks. It was

only at this point that the authorities returned with several varayoqs to bring the assailants

into custody.76

While the document recording the above case does not divulge the verdict, we do

know that Felipe Aycha was still Governor as of 1965. It was at this point that Mateo

Alocer penned a letter to the Subprefect charging that Aycha had once again abused his

authority. Around July of that year, Alocer had made the mistake of purchasing a pair of

horses in the Governor’s presence. Sometime in August or September, Aycha

confiscated the animals without cause and rode them into nearby Chicllarrazo, setting

75 ARA, SC, Caja 33, Of. Institutos Armados 1959, Manifestación de Máximo Vilca Fernandez (9 October 1959); Manifestación de Demetrio Vilca Fernandez (9 October 1959); Manifestación de Clemente Núñez Mendoza (9 October 1959).

76 ARA, SC, Caja 33, Of. Institutos Armados 1959, Manifestación de Felipe Aycha (9 October 1959); Manifestación de Víctor Cayllahua (9 October 1959).

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them free after arriving. About a month later, the authority sold the two horses in a

public auction on the premise that they had not been claimed by an owner. Aycha even

bid on one of the horses himself. When Alocer confronted the Governor about the scam,

the latter simply denied it. “[N]ow,” Alocer wrote the Subprefect, “this same Governor is

walking around like the owner of [my] lost animal.” In committing “these types of

abuses and violations,” Alocer felt that Aycha was “abusing his authority and discrediting

his name as Governor of the district of Chuschi[.]”77

The reader may be wondering why I referred to Aycha as an indigenous

comunero in the previous chapter only to reintroduce him here as a qala authority. The

purpose of this seemingly incongruous characterization is not to send the reader into a tailspin of semantic confusion, but to illustrate the fluidity of racial identity in the mid- twentieth-century Andes. Just as the highlanders in Cuzco managed to maintain a cultural and racial claim to both indigenous and mestizo identities in Marisol de la

Cadena’s Indigenous Mestizos, so did chuschino comuneros “de-Indiannize” themselves for political purposes in Chuschi.78 In the previous chapter we discussed how Aycha’s

monopoly over cattle rustling activity in Chuschi had served as a source of individual

power. It did not take long for Aycha to fuse his extralegal dominion with civilian

power, becoming one of the few comuneros to break the racial barrier of the local

bureaucracy in the late-1950s. This should come as no surprise, for given his extralegal

persuasion and muscle, who would oppose his ascendency into local politics? It was in

this respect that the “indígena” Felipe Aycha entered the district-level bureaucracy that

77 ARA, SC, 1965, Queja ante el Subprefecto contra el Gobernador Felipe Aycha (5 November 1965).

78 Marisol de la Cadena, Indigenous Mestizos: The Politics of Race and Culture in Cuzco, Peru, 1919-1991 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 129-30.

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had typically been considered the terrain of village “mestizos,” the qalas. In many ways,

villagers already considered Aycha a qala, his unethical social conduct an indication of

his disregard for comunero values. We will recall, for instance, that other local cattle

rustlers also logged inconsistent racial classifications in their criminal records. And with

his rise to local politics, Aycha’s compoblanos, and perhaps he himself, began to

associate him more with the mestizo vecinos than with the indigenous comuneros. To

borrow de la Cadena’s phrasing, I would suggest that Aycha’s power—both extralegal

and civilian—served to “de-Indiannize” him. Tayta Víctor even described Aycha to us as

“medio-moreno” (“part black”).79 Maybe this was an accurate phenotypical depiction, for as mentioned in the first chapter, state officials described Aycha’s complexion as

“copper.” But this may also have been tayta Víctor’s way of emphasizing that, as far as he was concerned, Aycha was neither fully indigenous nor mestizo. Another informant made a similar distinction about a comunero who had successfully infiltrated the mestizo- dominated profession of teachers, referring to him in the diminutive “qalacha” (“little qala,”) to imply that he was not fully “mestizo.”80

The second qala accused of abusing his authority was Bernardo Chipana. In June

1981, the comuneros of the barrio Yaruca Rumichaca, together with their authorities, denounced Governor Chipana before the Lieutenant Mayor. They charged that Chipana, along with other high-ranking district officials, had sold ten heads of the barrio’s cattle for a total of 450,000 soles and used some of the profits for drinking money, “as if the

79 Interview with Víctor Núñez, Chuschi (26 July 2007).

80 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

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cattle had belonged to them.”81 The authorities then began charging the comuneros for

everything from “the land they occupied” to “the rights to build homes in the pago of

Yaruca-Rumichaca [sic],” vowing to “demolish the homes, or evict” anyone who could

not come up with the imposed taxes. Then, “for absolutely no reason,” Chipana and his

colleagues went around Yaruca Rumichaca and other barrios stealing upwards of twenty-

five sheep.82 The indigenous plaintiffs felt that the qala authorities’ actions should have

consequences, and called for the immediate resignation of Chipana and company. They

signed off with a statement reminding the Lieutenant Mayor that if he did not honor their

request, the accused “might commit far worse crimes against the comuneros and to the

detriment of this community.”83 The Lieutenant Mayor responded by holding a town hall

meeting inside the church occupying the corner of Chuschi’s village square. The qala

leaders defended their actions, but the indigenous comuneros demanded their resignations. While his colleagues stepped down without a fight, Chipana held his ground until a majority of eighty-one comunero attendees voted him out of office.84

If the reader finds Bernardo Chipana’s name familiar, it is because he was the

chuschino migrant who in 1979 teamed up with Felipe Aycha to steal from his vecino padrino, Ernesto Jaime. Because Chipana had spent a great deal of time outside of the

81 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (Denuncia de los comuneros de Yaruca-Rumichaca ante el Teniente Alcalde del Consejo Municipal (26 June 1981).

82 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Denuncia de los comuneros de Yaruca-Rumichaca ante el Teniente Alcalde del Consejo Municipal (26 June 1981).

83 Ibid.

84 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Acta de Asamblea Comunal Extraordinaria (14 June 1981). The record book did not indicate how many constituents voted for Chipana to retain his post, indicating only that the figure of eighty-one was a majority.

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village and therefore did not participate in comunero activities, indigenous villagers

considered him a qala, but his is yet another illustration of the ambiguities of racial

categorizations in Chuschi. Whether or not they considered him a full-fledged qala or

comunero, Chipana’s behavior violated several core comunero values. In the previous

chapter, we saw how he had breached compadrazgo bonds by stealing from his vecino

godfather. Now, we find the accusation that he continued to steal during his tenure as a

political authority, placing personal avarice above comuneros’ cultural demands that he protect communal interests. As we will see in chapter five, Bernardo Chipana’s social misconduct and political illegitimacy would come back to haunt him during the Shining

Path insurgency.

The third qala authority I would like to mention is Vicente Blanco.85 Vicente was

Humberto Ascarza’s son-in-law. While we cannot rule out true love, from what I have

read and observed, intermarriage between qalakuna in Chuschi was common practice,

facilitating the consolidation of their political and economic capital. Blanco’s story also points to another means through which this was accomplished: becoming a faculty member in the village schools. Educators in Chuschi enjoyed a degree of social prestige that comuneros simply could not achieve. Because most indigenous campesinos did not have access to higher education, they often deferred to the authority of the community’s non-indigenous intelligentsia in political matters. For this reason, it was not uncommon, particularly from the 1960s onward, for Chuschi’s non-indigenous political leaders to

85 This is a pseudonym.

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simultaneously hold teaching positions in the local schools. Blanco was one of the qalas who held both.

There were limits to the amount of exploitation that indigenous peasants were willing to tolerate from qala teachers, though, and one thing they did not accept was the notion of educated vecinos using their smarts to take advantage of comuneros who were less familiar with the laws of the land. Blanco stepped over this line on more than one occasion. In 1970, he was still teaching at the local elementary school when comunero

Isidro Vilca brought criminal charges against him. Vilca alleged that the instructor had employed dirty tricks in order to dispossess him of his corn fields in the lowlands of the village. Two years earlier, the fields’ legal owner, Gregorio Huaycha, had passed away.

During his lifetime, however, Huaycha had recognized the plot of Anccara as Vilca’s, since the latter had possessed and worked it “since time immemorial.” In fact, Vilca doubted that Huaycha was even aware that Ancarra technically belonged to him;

Huaycha may not have been, but Blanco was. According to Vilca, Blanco seized the moment of Huaycha’s death to fabricate a land transfer that would place the plot in his possession. The only thing he lacked to complete the transaction was Huaycha’s fingerprint. Before Huaycha’s remains were laid to rest, the teacher snuck into the location where the corpse was located and pressed Huaycha’s lifeless finger to the document! Vilca added that the reason he had taken so long to report the incident was that he had only just recently learned of the teacher’s antics. It was a bold accusation, to be sure, but Vilca believed that Blanco’s record in the community illustrated his poor character. “In the town of Chuschi,” Vilca stated, “the accused has demonstrated his experienced behavior as a usurper [arranchador] of the lands of humble campecinos

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[sic], supported by false documents and instruments, and he has a heavy criminal record,

of which even the provincial authorities are aware.”86

That he had a criminal record not even Blanco could deny. When Blanco gave his

deposition in 1972, the thirty-eight-year-old teacher admitted that two additional court

cases were being brought against him at the moment, one for attempted murder and

another for rape. He assured the court that these other charges had been brought against

him with the explicit purpose of “ruining his teaching career and creating negative priors

to go on my service record.” As for the attacks on his character—that his criminal record

was “heavy” and that he had a habit of falsifying documents in order to take land from

the “humble” peasantry—they were simply false, as was the rest of Vilca’s accusation.

The court concurred, exonerating Blanco of all charges.87

It would not be long before Vilca took legal action against the qala a second time.

In 1976, Vilca had much more political clout than he did during the previous litigation,

occupying the newly created position of communal President. Blanco, for his part, had

just completed a six year term as district Mayor. In a power struggle reminiscent of the

one waged between Humberto Ascarza and Ernesto Jaime twenty years prior, Vilca

accused the qala Mayor of smuggling public funds. Vilca first suspected that something

was awry when the former Mayor undertook a public works project to construct a post

office. The town council had received a grant from the Peruvian state to hire a contractor

86 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 69, Exp. 28, Denuncia de Isidro Vilca contra Vicente Blanco [pseud.] por el delito contra la fé pública (12 Janaury 1970).

87 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 69, Exp. 28, Instructiva de Vicente Blanco (8 August 1972). The court’s ruling is not included in the file, but Cárdenas alluded to the ruling in a subsequent litigation. See ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 142, Exp. 101, Instructiva de Vicente Blanco sobre el delito de malversión de fondos (Circa 28 October 1976).

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for the job, but instead he compelled the comuneros to provide the manual labor for the

project. The mestizo Mayor justified not paying the indigenous comuneros for their labor

by calling the construction a communal project (acción cívica). The only thing Mayor

Blanco actually paid for, Vilca asserted, was the construction material. Nevertheless,

Blanco reported that he had hired a contractor and claimed over 147,500 soles for the entire job. Vilca, however, estimated that the materials for the construction set the Mayor

back no more than 30,000 soles. Since he did not pay one cent in labor costs, this meant

that over 100,000 soles had gone unaccounted for.88 Nor was this the only time Vicente

Blanco compromised his own integrity as Mayor, Vilca asserted, charging that the mestizo leader had also supervised the construction of a medical post in the community for which he received 20,000 soles from the federal government. The problem, Vilca explained, was that Blanco never filed a single receipt to show where the money had gone. Nor did he report how he had used public funds to pave Chuschi’s Mercado de

Abastos (Supplies Market). Finally, Vilca charged that the teacher-Mayor had been charging comuneros for the rights to consume the community’s irrigation water. Once again, the Mayor had neglected to disclose where the money he collected from this had gone.89

Blanco categorically denied the charges, suggesting that the claimant had

challenged his integrity out of spite over Blanco’s victory in their previous land dispute.90

88 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 142, Exp. 101, Denuncia de Isidro Vilca ante el Agente Fiscal sobre malversión de fondos (28 October 1976).

89 Ibid.

90 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 142, Exp. 101, Instructiva de Vicente Blanco sobre el delito de malversión de fondos (Circa 28 October 1976).

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And just as the Land Court cleared him of the charges in the Anccara dispute, so did the

Public Ministry vindicate Blanco in the present case.91 While we cannot be sure whether

most indigenous chuschinos shared Vilca’s concerns regarding Blanco’s abuse of authority, it is likely that they were aware of such allegations, and as small town gossip goes, rumors and accusations can be just as powerful in swaying public opinion as concrete facts.

Nor was Vilca the only prominent figure with whom Blanco clashed. Billie Jean

Isbell and her research team also had several unpleasant encounters with Blanco during

his tenure as Mayor in the mid-1970s. Isbell describes her run-ins with Blanco with

careful precision in her ethnography, so I will not go into too much detail about the

altercations here.92 Instead, I will offer a brief synopsis of the events, which draws from

Isbell’s account as well as the information I have uncovered from the written historical record, followed by my own assessment of the confrontation and its significance.

During a return visit to Chuschi in 1975, Isbell noticed that the village’s qala

notables, the authorities in general and the teachers in particular, were unusually hostile

towards her and her research team. Isbell felt that Blanco, who at the time was both

Mayor and primary school teacher, was especially opposed to her presence in the

community. The tensions came to a head during the June Corpus Christi festival, which

Isbell had intended on video-recording for her research. First, Blanco orchestrated and participated in a customary scissors dance. This was doubly curious because (1) it was

91 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 142, Exp. 101, Sentencia del Ministerio Público en el juicio contra Vicente Blanco por el delito de malversión de fondos (22 August 1978).

92 See Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, esp. ch. 10.

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being performed at an inappropriate juncture of the seasonal calendar, and (2) a qala

leader had organized and participated in an indigenous performance. Blanco later

ordered his varayoqs to whip Isbell’s male and female photographers with a three- pronged chicote, a command that one drunken indigenous varayoq perfunctorily carried

out.93 “Meanwhile,” Isbell writes, “[T]he municipal mayor was in a rage. He threatened

to have his people kill us and burn not only our house but all my compadres’ houses as

well. He pointed to my compadre, who had just terminated the office of alcalde varayoq,

and claimed that he was going to jail for collaborating with CIA spies [referring to Isbell

and her research team]”.94 Within days of the altercation, police and government officials launched an all-out investigation. Isbell sets the stage of the meeting in her book: “The delegation from Cangallo included the provincial sub-prefect, the municipal mayor from Cangallo, and two lawyers. They called a meeting that the president of the administration of the community (my compadre), the president of vigilance, the district mayor, the municipal mayor, and my research staff were requested to attend. Three schoolteachers also attended[.]”95

The contents of what followed during that Friday the 13th meeting are recorded in

the official report that Subprefect Máximo González sent to the departmental Prefect.96

Blanco took the floor first. He explained that Isbell and her “group of North Americans” had been photographing and filming a documentary in the village without paying the

93 Ibid., 227-30.

94 Ibid., 230.

95 Ibid., 233.

96 ARA, SC, Caja 36, Informes de la Superioridad 1975, Informe del Subprefecto al Prefecto sobre queja interpuesta por Bellce [sic] Jean Isbell, contra Alcalde de Chuschi (17 June 1975).

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corresponding fees. In making the documentary, Isbell and her team were in effect

“interfer[ing] with communal labors” and “meddl[ing] with the breast of the community in order to take away the traditional customs of the zone.” Committing such an act without the expressed consent of the Mayor’s office violated the “statutory customs of the communal government[.]” He added that his office had requested “in a harmonious way” that the researchers refrain from shooting the footage.97 After Blanco gave his deposition, the panel gave the ethnographer the floor. According to the Subprefect’s report, Isbell “categorically denied” the Mayor’s claim that he had informed her of the supposed filming “tax” before the Corpus Christi confrontation. Besides, she had plenty of credentials from both the United States and the Peruvian government to carry out her project; she even had the institutional affiliation of Peru’s prestigious Catholic

University. On top of this, she had made arrangements to repay the community for its inhabitants’ cooperation by donating an electric generator. In spite of all this, the Mayor had sanctioned an attack on her person and that of her research team during Corpus

Christi. The qala official had gone as far as to threaten to kill the researchers and burn their equipment.98 After both sides had given their depositions, the arbiters offered for the two sides to reach an agreement of some sort, to which Blanco replied that he could make no such decision without first having consulted his comuneros. He suggested that for the time being the anthropologist could simply pay the requested tax, which Isbell did not do. The council then asked the communal President if he had anything to add. He noted for the record that the North Americans were responsible for no wrongdoings in the

97 Ibid.

98 Ibid.

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community, but that the group of teachers that Blanco represented seemed intent on

expelling them from the community anyway. At that moment the Subprefect called the

hearing to a close. In his synopsis of the proceedings, he noted the urgent need to resolve

the issue soon “since it concerns a rebellious and totally problematic town.”99 The issue

never did get resolved, and Isbell and her team eventually left town.

Why did the Mayor and the other qala teachers confront the North American

anthropologist in 1975? Isbell suggests that several factors were at play. One was that

the instructors tended to be more politically radical than most chuschinos. As far as the

leftist instructors were concerned, Isbell was at best “a capitalistic exploiter” and at worst

“a CIA agent.”100 Another was what Isbell describes as a conflict of interests between the indigenous peasantry and the mestizo educators. Whereas the indigenous peasantry

defended tradition and custom, educators in Chuschi saw the anthropologist’s defense of

indigenous customs as an obstacle to progress and modernization: “The peasants of

Chuschi have chosen a strategy of protecting what they have, while the [politically]

radical teachers of Chuschi have chosen strategies to gain what they do not have—better

wages, increased social mobility, and the power to influence decisions.”101 Nor were

they comfortable with the ease with which she settled into the village hierarchy: “The contemplation of the upward mobility granted me by their own society, which denied the same mobility to them, caused a great deal of resentment.”102

99 Ibid.

100 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, 227.

101 Ibid., 237.

102 Ibid., 227.

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This last point merits some discussion. While I share Isbell’s contention that her

presence in the community represented a threat to the qala elite, specifically the teachers,

I would suggest that this was not because they lacked “better wages, increased social

mobility, and the power to influence decisions,” but rather because they already had all

those things. Thus, the respect that she had earned from the indigenous peasantry

challenged the very foundations upon which their authority lay. One of the main markers

of their social prestige was that they earned better wages than indigenous comuneros.

But professor Isbell still earned more. Another was their perception of cultural and racial

superiority vis-à-vis the indigenous masses. But if their dominance depended on their

presumption of racial superiority as mestizos, what would that imply for Isbell, who was

unmistakably white? As Isbell notes, they also distinguished themselves from indigenous

chuschinos by emphasizing their connections to the “outside, modern” world; most were

not even from Chuschi, while others’ were only first-generation chuschinos.103 Isbell was not only connected to the world beyond Chuschi, she was from another country—and a

“first world” country at that! The village intelligentsia also prided itself on being more educated than the average chuschino, but their primary, secondary, or in some cases, university education paled in comparison to that of Dr. Isbell. Similarly, while they possessed the literacy and language skills to get ahead in a Spanish-dominated society,

Isbell had written academic articles in Spanish and English. Her proposal to launch educational programs that would provide Spanish-Quechua instruction to indigenous peasants104 only threatened to reduce the educational gap upon which their intellectual

103 Ibid., 226.

104 Ibid., 225.

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authority was predicated. Finally, qala teachers, who in addition to their jobs as educators of indigenous children, often filled other paternalistic roles within the community: as political authorities, patrones of indigenous peones in the fields, and padrinos of indigenous godchildren. For the first time, a person had been accepted by native chuschinos who possessed all of the aforementioned attributes of a powerful and influential qala, with one exception: she was a woman. And as an influential and respected woman, her presence in the community challenged the very foundation of

Chuschi’s patriarchal order. Given all of these threats, it did not take long for Blanco and his colleagues to conclude that Isbell had to go.

‘To Come with a Knife and Slit My Throat’: The Exception that Proves the Rule

There is one final qala leader whose relationship with comuneros merits discussion—not for his abuses, but for his exceptional reputation as a legitimate mestizo patriarch. I am referring to Ernesto Jaime Miranda, whose name has already appeared above on numerous occasions. Jaime’s political career took off just as Ascarza’s began to decline, making way for their mid-1950s power struggle. At stake was the unofficial title of Chuschi’s undisputed patriarch. The initial clash developed during the land conflict between the chuschinos and the neighboring Del Solar family. As Ascarza revealed in a letter to the judge during his embezzlement hearing, Jaime was married to hacendado Emilio Del Solar’s daughter. Ascarza reasoned that Jaime had brought charges against him with the sole purpose of avenging his father-in-law, who had lost the

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legal battle that Ascarza himself headed.105 Jaime and his cronies, Ascarza later assured

the judge, wanted the trial to accomplish what they could not: “to come with a knife and

slit my throat.”106

Just as Jaime accused Ascarza of threatening potential witnesses, so did Ascarza

complain that Governor Jaime had flexed his political muscle to sway testimony in his

favor. Together with acting Mayor Nemesio Retamozo, Jaime had made “all kinds of

threats in an attempt to vary the conviction of the witnesses.”107 Ascarza later claimed

that he had it on good authority that Jaime and Retamozo had coerced witnesses into

testifying against him.108 When it appeared that his pleas had gone unnoticed, Ascarza

stepped up the language of his accusations, claiming that the Governor was “making use of his authority to bring the entire town into his personal hatred [towards me] and vengeance [against me].” Jaime, he continued, was rounding up the village’s indigenous inhabitants and transporting them “under strict surveillance” to Ayacucho City to serve as

key witnesses against him. Ascarza claimed that Jaime had detained at least two

“honorable” comuneros who had had the courage to testify on his behalf, arguing that

Jaime’s actions “completely neutralized” his legal defense.109

105 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición del denunciado Humberto Ascarza ante el Juez Instructor (19 August 1954).

106 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición del denunciado Humberto Ascarza ante el Juez Instructor (8 October 1954).

107 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición del denunciado Humberto Ascarza ante el Juez Instructor (3 September 1954).

108 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición del denunciado Humberto Ascarza ante el Juez Instructor (27 December 1954).

109 ARA, CC Cangallo, Leg. 1173, Exp. 838, Petición del denunciado Humberto Ascarza ante el Presidente del Tribunal Correccional (4 July 1955).

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It is entirely possible that Ernesto Jaime Miranda used the same heavy-handed

tactics of which he accused Ascarza in order to sway comuneros’ testimonies in his favor.

After all, his record in public office was by no means free of controversy. In 1946,

comunero Andrés Núñez informed the Prefect that “the abusive Governor Ernesto Jaime,

who was elected regrettably [en mala hora],” had taken over his land in Uchuirre. Núñez

recommended that Jaime be removed from office “because his deeds demonstrate the

untrustworthiness of the [district’s] top political authorities.”110 Over a decade later,

Víctor Calderon complained that Jaime had commandeered his chacra called Huertapata

and begun planting his own corn there. When officials called Jaime in for questioning,

they discovered that the Governor had fled to Ayacucho City. Apparently, the strategy worked, for the Civil Guard eventually dropped the charges.111 To these comuneros,

Jaime was probably no different than Ascarza.

Unlike Ascarza, however, comuneros appeared willing to vouch for this qala leader. Returning to the 1954 petition in which eighty-one indigenous comuneros joined the district’s qala authorities in denouncing Ascarza before the departmental Prefect, we find that the document included a staunch defense of Governor Jaime against Ascarza’s counter-attacks.112 The petition opened with a statement of gratitude to the Prefect “for

having entrusted the political Administration of this district of Chuschi to don Ernesto

110 ARA, SC Caja 11, Of. Chuschi 1946, Denuncia ante el Prefecto contra Ernesto Jaime Miranda (15 February 1946).

111 ARA, SC, Caja 11, Of. Chuschi 1946, Informe del Gobernador de Chuschi al Subprefecto (9 November 1957); Informe del Teniente Gobernador sobre el fugutivo Ernesto Jaime (5 February 1958); Informe del Comandante de puesto de la Guardia Civil al Subprefecto sobre las investigaciones sobre el terreno ‘Huertapata” (21 March 1958).

112 AGN, MI, PA 1954, Petición de los vecinos de Chuschi al Prefecto (3 April 1954).

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Jaime Miranda; who, [sic] is an authority who strictly completes his duties, and, whose relations with the indigenous race, who in their [sic] great mass make up almost all of the inhabitants of the district, are immemorial.” The petitioners reminded the departmental

Prefect that this marked the first time that the chuschinos had petitioned his office in defense of a local official. The reason, they confessed, was that “this is also the first time that an authority has earned the affection, respect, and gratitude of nuestro pueblo [our town], for his zagacity [sic] and austere conduct.” They were well aware of accusations lodged by Ascarza and his godson Dueñas against Jaime, accusations which they believed were inspired “by nothing more than a spirit of hatred and personal egoism, and so that, one way or another, they can reclaim the posts which they have conceded[.]”113

The petitioners went on to compare the leaders’ service records. Whereas

Ascarza and Dueñas had failed chuschinos through their personal ambitions and general incompetence with respect to public works, Ernesto Jaime had proven himself an able qala authority. During his first stint as Governor from 1944 to 1946, he oversaw the successful construction of the village Boys School. The structure, they added, was “first class.” He had also supervised the completion of the two-story Casa Consistorial and

local prison. And while Ascarza and Dueñas botched the construction of the bridge

between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, Jaime had secured wire cables for the bridge

covering the Pampas River. The only reason that the wires had not been installed was because of the “inertia” of Ascarza and Dueñas. In addition to these works, Jaime had overseen the conversion of the local soccer field into a sort of stadium and delivered on

113 Ibid.

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his promise to improve local pathways. The petitioners reassured the Prefect that they

had the “unanimous sentiment of the people of Chuschi, who know how to assess the

benefits they’ve received and demonstrate their appreciation for a benevolent and

laborious authority like señor Jaime.” The supplicants closed with a request that the

Prefect recognize “the permanency of don Ernesto Jaime Miranda in his position of

Governor of Chuschi” and disregard the “malicious intervention” of Ascarza and his

allies.114

Indigenous chuschinos continued to hold Jaime in high esteem afterwards. Jaime

had passed away shortly before I began my field research in 2007, but collective memory

regarding the late qala leader had already become the stuff of legend. Ignacio Huaycha,

one of the first indigenous comuneros to break the race barrier by becoming an elementary school teacher in the 1970s, spoke affectionately of the late-mestizo leader

during a July 2007 conversation with Alberto, Julián, and me. According to profe

(professor) Ignacio, Jaime “wasn’t like the other [qala authorities]. …People loved him.

…He didn’t just lead for himself, but rather he lead like an authority should. He had a

clear understanding [of how an authority should lead], much more than the other [qala

authorities]. …People respected him.”115

Just what had Jaime done to earn villagers’ respect as an authority? In addition to

the qualities outlined in the above petition, many believed that he was more sensitive to

customary institutions and practices than other vecino leaders. As profe Ignacio

explained, “[W]hen he was an authority he never failed to give the envarados a single

114 Ibid.

115 Interview with Ignacio Huaycha, Chuschi (27 July 2007).

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lantern, which was customarily given to them [so that they could patrol the fields at

night].”116 This gesture illustrated Jaime’s understanding of and respect for the policing

function of the indigenous authorities. At the same time, it highlighted his respect for

cultural codes of reciprocity, as evidenced in his commitment to furnishing them with the

supplies necessary for them to perform their public service.

Additionally, Jaime prioritized collective over private interests. Although I found no documentary evidence to support this claim, several chuschinos told us that Jaime had even divorced his qala wife as a gesture of his commitment to the comuneros. Profe

Ignacio summed up this opinion: “Just when we started having [land] conflicts [with the

Del Solar family], he left his wife. ‘Maybe he’s on their side,’ people started saying,

‘maybe this yerno [in-law] is going to Ayacucho and telling them all of our business.’ So he said, ‘What do I have to do to…convince people that I’m a chuschino?’ So he got

divorced. He sided with the village. …He sure was a good authority.”117 Comuneros

preferred not to speculate on whether his alleged affair with his indigenous servant, María

Cabana, had any connection to the divorce. At the time, though, Jaime’s suspicious

relationship with his indigenous empleada (employee) sent Flores into a jealous rage as

she vowed to catch Cabana alone and unawares in the middle of the night and kill her.

So imminent was the mestiza’s threat that in June 1966 Cabana fled Chuschi for the

provincial capital and asked to be voluntarily placed in custody until the Subprefect could

guarantee her safety.118 Nevertheless, chuschinos in 2007 chose to ignore this

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid.

118 ARA, SC, Solicitud de garantías de María Cabana Allcca ante el Subprefecto (17 June 1966).

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circumstantial evidence and focus instead on how Jaime’s divorce and subsequent

marriage to yet another indigenous empleada further demonstrated his faithfulness to the community. Whether chuschinos reached the conclusion that Jaime had noble reasons for leaving his first wife on their own or because he told them so is irrelevant, for what matters is the perception that they had of the mestizo as an authority who placed communal over private interests.

More importantly to most villagers, Jaime had proved willing and able to

“protect” them against outside aggression. A former soldier in the Peruvian army, Jaime had the military skills to do so, as Profe Ignacio explained: “He was a [soldier] in the war with Ecuador in 1941, and when he returned to Chuschi around that time he began training some of the local youths [militarily].” Nor was this the only occasion in which he exhibited this type of leadership. As mentioned in the following chapter, it was Jaime who commanded chuschinos during the famous inter-community battle with

Quispillaccta in the early 1960s. Mounted on his horse with revolver in hand, the mestizo

leader illustrated his willingness to put his life on the line and personally defend his

indigenous constituents against outside aggression and to safeguard their territorial

integrity.

This “defense” of the community did not necessarily have to be achieved

militarily; it also could be exhibited through legal channels. An example came in 1968 when a local fourth-grader named Herminio Tucno drowned during a class fieldtrip to a

regional swimming pool. Comuneros held the qala teacher, one Moisés Olivares,

personally responsible for the death of the indigenous boy. Jaime, as Mayor, led the

charge, urging the boy’s parents to bring criminal litigation against Olivares for

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negligence. Jaime’s leadership in the case prompted a verbal spat between the two qalas in the municipal office in October 1968. Jaime told the Juez Instructor that Olivares stormed in and began yelling “at the top of his lungs [a voz en cuello],” declaring that

“any day now he would eliminate me.” He added that the words that came out of

Olivares’s mouth were so foul that “I cannot repeat them in this deposition, for their very nature prohibits me from saying them.”119 Olivares did not deny that the confrontation

took place, saying only that Jaime had exaggerated his actions and words. If anything,

Olivares clarified, it was the Mayor who had neglected to pay him the respect due to a

college graduate.120 The fact that the indigenous villagers, including the boy’s parents,

held the qala teacher accountable for the death of their child rather than, say, blaming

themselves, the boy himself, his peers, or simply dismissing it as an unfortunate accident,

indicates that they expected qala authority figures to protect indigenous children under

their care.

Thus, it is in exceptionalism that Ernesto Jaime proves the rule about indigenous

peasants’ expectations for local political authorities. By divorcing his qala wife and eventually remarrying an indígena; protecting his villagers militarily; initiating legal action on behalf of the comuneros against abusive and negligent mestizos; respecting customary institutions and practices; and exhibiting competent leadership with respect to communal works projects, Ernesto Jaime was able to convince many indigenous villagers of his legitimacy as an Andean patriarch, one who, like Tomás Katarí and Túpac Katarí

119 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 45, Exp. 142, Denuncia de Ernesto Jaime Miranda contra Moisés Olivares Ascarza (2 November 1968).

120 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Leg. 45, Exp. 142, Preventiva de Moisés Olivares Ascarza (2 November 1968).

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in nineteenth-century Bolivia, met peasants’ implicit demands about reciprocity and

paternalism. We should be careful not to take this argument too far, however, for one

might rightfully point to any number of differences between the Aymara peasants living

in nineteenth-century Bolivia and the Quechua-speaking highlanders of twentieth century

Ayacucho. To avoid slipping into “Andeanism,” I would like to make two observations

here about the heterogeneity of the Andean peasants’ political experiences. First, the indigenous peasants in Thomson’s study in particular sought a form of autonomy in which mestizo caciques would not be part of the political equation, whereas Jaime’s case demonstrates that indigenous chuschinos were willing to tolerate the rule of qala leaders provided that they passed this cultural litmus test. Second, we would be wise to consider

Postero’s cautionary words about indigenous views of leadership: “[T]he type of leader one wants may depend on social, economic, or symbolic positions one holds in the village. Contestations over power and meaning exist within any group, and they may affect the choices people make in their leaders.”121 As I have shown, some villagers still

complained about Jaime’s abuses, just as some defended Ascarza. This yields the likely

conclusion that these individuals either held their leaders to a different standard than

other comuneros, or they did not share the majority opinion about the extent to which

these leaders met these standards. For the most part, however, indigenous villagers in

Chuschi, like the indigenous Bolivians before and after them, did hold their indigenous

and mestizo leaders to a moral standard of paternalism, justice, and reciprocity, and it was

a standard that was uniquely Andean.

121 Postero, Now We Are Citizens, 90.

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HUAYCHAO’S HACENDADOS

“Peru is a semifeudal and semicolonial country. What does this semifeudalism

and semicolonialism represent to the immense masses of campesinos?:

Oppression and servitude.”-----Osmán Morote Barrionuevo.122

The man who wrote these words later become recognized as Shining Path’s

second-in-command, subordinate only to party leader Abimael Guzmán Reynoso. The

citation comes from the author’s 1970 thesis in Anthropology at the National University

of San Cristóbal de Huamanga, which focused on the district of San José de Santillana, a

highland district near Huaychao. When I began my research in 2005, I expected to find

evidence supporting Morote’s observations about class conflict in pre-insurgency

Huaychao, albeit without the overtly Marxist rhetoric. I was surprised to find not a single

document recording conflict between indigenous huaychainos and their hacienda lords

during the period of my study. Remembering the historian’s mantra that when it comes

to archival research, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, I expected my ethnographic research and oral interviews to fill in the gaps in the written record. Much to my surprise, I found that most huaychainos who were old enough to remember the

days when Huaychao was a hacienda spoke of their former hacienda owners with a sense

of general respect. Now, Jaymie Patricia Heilman has chronicled political alliances between indigenous campesinos and mestizo hacendados in the Huanta valley before

122 Morote Barrionuevo, Osmán. “Luchas de clases en las zonas altas de Huanta (Distrito de Santillana)” (Informe Preliminar de Antropología, UNSCH, 1970), 87. I thank Ponciano Del Pino for furnishing me a copy of this rare text.

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Shining Path.123 While her study focuses on the “political pragmatism and opportunism”

behind these alliances,124 this section examines the cultural logic behind indigenous peasants’ affinities towards mestizo land barons. Taken together, our studies challenge

historians to look beyond conventional narratives of landowner-peasant, mestizo-

indigenous conflict and to consider the ways in which social, cultural, and political

“pacts” between the two groups also conditioned historical processes.

‘Oppression and Servitude’? Hacendado-Peasant Relations, 1940-1962

The first hacienda baron whom huaychainos remembered was Rafael Chávez.

Chávez’s parents, Pedro Chávez and Dolores Cárdenas, possessed the haciendas of

Huaychao and neighboring Macabamba since about the 1920s. When they died, they left

Huaychao to Rafael and Macabamba to his brother, Maximiliano.125

Although the hacienda was in Huaychao, Chávez often had his laborers rotate

week long shifts, known as semaneros, in the valley of Huanta City, where he lived.

Around six men would leave Huaychao on Sunday, spending the remainder of the week

in the city planting Chávez’s corn, plucking the spines from his tuna (a prickly Andean

fruit), tending to his fields, and performing domestic chores. The following Sunday, the

laborers would return from the city to be replaced by a half dozen new workers.

Typically, semanero workers received between five and seven soles per week, a sum that

123 See Heilman, By Other Means, chs. 1, 5.

124 Ibid., 45.

125 AMAA, Exp. Huaychao, Escritura de compraventa (15 November 1962).

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was usually enough for them to purchase about a kilogram of sugar and salt and perhaps

some bread or even a t-shirt, items hard to come by in the Iquichano highlands.126

On the surface, huaychainos’ collective memory regarding Chávez’s treatment of

his indigenous tenants seems to confirm Morote’s observations. Tayta Mariano grew up

on the hacienda in the 1940s. “I knew Rafael Chávez when I was little,” he told Julián

and me, gesturing towards the children running around his yard, “just like my little

grandchildren you see there, I was about that size.” The first thing tayta Mariano

recollected about don Rafael was how different he was than his indigenous peones: “He was sort of deaf [opa], he hardly understood our language, and his nickname was ‘Opa

Rafael’[.]”127 Tayta Mariano went on to describe Chávez as tall and chubby, two physical traits that few native huaychainos shared.128 Chávez himself was also quick to

point out these racial distinctions when dealing with his indigenous field hands. Tayta

Mariano evoked the manner in which the mestizo landowner spoke down to them: “Get to work you midget men! To work, carajo [dammit]!”129 When we pressed tayta Esteban

on the subject, he confirmed that Chávez sometimes used racial slurs, referring to his

indigenous peones by the derogatory slurs “chutos” or “cholos.” But tayta Esteban remembered him most for his foul mouth, “Uff! He cursed all the time! ‘shit’ [‘mierda’]

126 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

127 Ibid.

128 Ibid.

129 Ibid.

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this, ‘dammit’ that. …He’d say, ‘Work hard you slackers, or I’ll expel you [from my

hacienda]!’”130

Racial slurs aside, former semanero workers criticized the poor conditions under

which they worked in Huanta City. “He was very mean to us,” tayta Mariano said of

Chávez. When asked to expand on this point, he explained,

[H]e was a man who didn’t feed us well, he gives [sic] us food that one would give to a dog in four [cattle] hides and only one tiny blanket for all six [semanero workers to share] on the cement floor in Huanta. …[H]e’d only give us two [ears] of corn per person and he’d give us very few things to cook ourselves. …And after working in the fields [all week] we’d return all the way from Huanta fatigued, having not eaten well [nor] slept well, just totally fatigued we’d return.131

Tayta Mariano remembered one accident in which a fellow peón was nearly crushed to death while attempting to carry two large poles that the hacendado had tied to his

shoulders. Rather than attend to the fallen worker, the hacendado shouted, “Stand up

straight, carajo! Stand up you midget! Get to work!” Tayta Mariano said that the peón

fell ill and eventually perished as a result of the fall.132 Sometimes, he recalled, the

patrón would spy on his field hands from the nearby woods and catch them lying down in the grass to catch a breather. Whenever this occurred, he would sneak up on them and strike them with his walking stick.133

Tayta Mariano’s descriptions suggest that Chávez ran the hacienda in Huaychao

with equal tyranny. During harvest season, the land baron would make brief trips to the

130 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán. Huaychao (5 February 2006).

131 Interview with Mariano Quispe. Huaychao (7 February 2006).

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

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hacienda from the direction of Cunya; the sight of the mestizo lord ascending on

horseback from the fog-laden graveyard must have been a chilling one for many a huaychaino. Chávez did not pay his peones for the work they provided him on the estate.

Instead, each peasant household received a share of coca leaves and a plot of land on the hacienda to farm.134 During a typical harvest, one peasant household kept roughly ten sacks of potatoes for subsistence and surrendered the remaining fifty or so to the estate owner. During his visits, Chávez would patrol the perimeters of the hacienda wielding a verga, threatening to strike it upon anyone who surrendered him anything but the best

yucca tubers.135 This done, the campesinos packed Chávez’s share onto horses, llamas,

and other beasts of burden and herded them towards Chávez’s Huanta City residence. “If

you get [sic] to Huanta and it’s less than the tupo [?],” tayta Mariano told us while

chewing on a handful of coca leaves, “well then he takes [sic] away your portion of the

harvest or your costal.”136 Tayta Mariano recalled one particular campesino who always

seemed to suffer this fate: “They [sic] would take Geronimo Quispe’s costales, and

sometimes they would take his llamas as compensation for his poor harvests.”137

While the above discussion certainly seems to corroborate the general

observations made by Osmán Morote during his field research in the Huanta highlands,

the following does not. Even while acknowledging that Chávez ran his hacienda with a

134 Ibid.

135 Ibid. Apparently, the use of the verga in Ayacucho was not as uncommon as one might think. Heilman also records its appearance in twentieth-century Carhuanca. See Heilman, “By Other Means,” 361-62.

136 A costal appears to be a measurement related to the amount of harvest that one can transport on a llama, but I have been unable to identify its exact meaning or origin.

137 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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firm hand, most of the huaychainos we interviewed described him as a decent

hacendado. For instance, when we asked Inocencio Urbano, a man over one hundred years old who had spend most of his adult life in Huaychao, to recount his saddest memory from his days on Chávez’s hacienda, he simply lifted his head and murmured,

“Manam,” indicating that he had none. His wife, mama Ernestina, who earlier in the conversation had described Chávez as “allinmi runakuna [‘good people’],” agreed: “No, only once la violencia began [did we have sad memories], for that was when people started disappearing, some of whom have returned and others have not. That was it, before there was no sadness. In those days [of the hacienda] we were happy just being in the mountains with our livestock.”138 To be sure, such nostalgic references to “the good

old days” must be taken with some reservations. Nonetheless, the elderly couple’s

affirmation that things were good during the days of the hacienda suggests that they did

not view the mestizo landowner’s behavior and actions as unjust or even excessive. Even

peasants who did not explicitly say that Chávez was a good patrón were reticent to

denounce him outright. When we asked tayta Isidro if Chávez had been a good or bad

hacendado, he had trouble giving us a straight up answer: “Rafael was, well. …[H]e hit

people with a verga and took away their costal, so he was bad in that sense. …That’s

how things were back then.”139 As tayta Isidro spoke I became frustrated and

disappointed by his refusal to cast the former landlord in a negative light, as he elected

instead to qualify his characterization with references to Chávez’s specific actions. Why,

I wondered, did indigenous huaychainos insist on portraying Chávez as a decent

138 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

139 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006). Emphasis added.

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hacendado and human being if they acknowledged that he was abusive and totalitarian

towards them?

The first answer to this question is that they believed there was little they could do

about it. President Fortunato and tayta Esteban grew up on Chávez’s hacienda in the

1950s and 1960s. When we asked them how Chávez’s authoritarian reign over the

hacienda had made them and their parents feel at the time, President Fortunato responded

that they “were already used to it,” and tayta Esteban added that they obeyed the

hacendado out of “obligation.”140 These attitudes explain the lack of archival

documentation regarding patron-client conflicts on the Huaychao hacienda. It was not that Chávez had a perfect record when it came to the treatment of his peones. Rather, the indigenous tenants felt that such exploitation at the hands of a mestizo power holder was to be expected. They also feared his reprisals if they did protest. When asked if

Chávez’s peones ever resisted his whippings, mama Ernestina refuted, “Manam, not at all, they only hunched over and cried. Who knows what he would have done to them had they resisted.”141 President Fortunato made a similar observation: “If you left [to report

mistreatment], you lost your chacra.”142 This psychological intimidation was therefore

crucial to the mestizo lord’s local hegemony. Finally, indigenous huaychainos believed

that Peruvian law was on Chávez’s side. “Back then the law protected the hacendados,”

tayta Mariano confessed, “In those days we couldn’t talk back to the hacendado.”143

140 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

141 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

142 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

143 Interview with Mariano Quispe. Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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Whether or not Chávez actually had the legal upper hand is irrelevant, however, for

huaychainos were not prepared to put their bodies and homes on the line to challenge

what they perceived to be a perfectly appropriate power relationship.

Chávez understood that his dominion depended on huaychainos not knowing their

legal rights, which is why he was violently opposed to their education. Although

President Fortunato and tayta Esteban remembered there being a school in Huaychao by

the time they attended in the 1950s, they said that Chávez did not want his adult tenants

to receive an education. “The hacendado didn’t want them to study, not even our

parents,” remembered President Fortunato, “because he would say, ‘If they study they

might rebel.’ That’s why the tenants were illiterate.” “Because [if you studied] you can

[sic] talk back to him,” tayta Esteban added. President Fortunato nodded his head,

“Because with an education we can [sic] respond with better understanding [of our

rights].”144 There may have been some truth to this, for it was the educated tenants of

tayta Esteban and President Fortunato’s generation who would eventually obtain

Huaychao’s recognition as a grupo campesino in the 1970s.

Another reason that huaychainos did not resent Chávez for his abuses is that they expected nothing less from a mestizo land baron. The following conversation with

President Fortunato and tayta Esteban illustrates this point:

Question: Did [Chávez] get mad a lot? Esteban: He’d get mad, because he’s [sic] an aggressive person. He’s the patrón. Fortunato: Everyone was scared of him. Esteban: People were always looking over their shoulders. Question: How’s that?

144 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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Esteban: If he was in a bad mood, people were scared. Question: What would people say? Esteban: They respected him. Fortunato: They [respected him] out of fear.145

Rather than question Chávez’s belligerence, President Fortunato and tayta Esteban dismissed it as typical patrón behavior (‘he’s the patrón’). Nor did they resent him for it.

Instead, they claimed to have respected the mestizo power holder. Yet as I gathered here and in several other conversations in which the concept emerged, the word “rispito,” the

Quechua pronunciation of the Spanish “respecto,” had a slightly different meaning to huaychainos than it did to me. Whereas I took the term to signify deference, admiration, and esteem, huaychainos conflated it with fear, submission, and above all, power. This power, moreover, was not negotiable. Thus, when we asked mama Ernestina and tayta

Inocencio if Chávez ever assisted his peones in the fields, the former scoffed, “They [sic] didn’t help. How could they possibly have helped us?” Tayta Inocencio repeated, “How could they have helped us?”146 Although the question referred specifically to Rafael

Chávez, the elderly couple used the third person, “they,” referring to all non-indigenous

land barons. In other words, indigenous peones never expected their mestizo lords to

labor alongside them.

They did expect them not to interfere with their cultural practices, however.

According to tayta Esteban, the hacendado donated different items to help facilitate the

festivities, but he never participated in them.147 Similarly, when tayta Mariano told us

145 Ibid.

146 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006). Emphasis added.

147 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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about all the harvest and religious festivals that the peones celebrated throughout the

calendar year, he focused on the presence of the customary varayoqs in the rituals,

saying, “The patrón didn’t meddle. ‘Just do what you need to do,’ he’d tell us.” When asked if the patrón ever showed up during these events, tayta Mariano shook his head,

“He didn’t participate. …[He’d just say,] ‘Just go and enjoy the fiesta.’”148 Rafael

Chávez thus understood his boundaries as a non-indigenous power holder. On the one hand, he adhered to cultural expectations of reciprocity by supplying certain goods for the festivities. On the other hand, he never attempted to insert himself into the indigenous rituals, keeping his physical and social distance.

Huaychainos also expected Chávez to maintain public order on his hacienda. It follows that nearly every huaychaino we interviewed commented on the efficient manner in which Chávez administered justice. While the indigenous tenants settled most disputes internally, Chávez personally handled the more serious cases. Most famously, he was known for carrying around his weapon of choice, the verga known around Huaychao as

“La Comisaría,” “The Police Station,” for its ability to enforce the law on Chávez’s hacienda. “Toro su pirichu [It was a bull’s penis], lined with good jebes [?], and the tip was like horse’s leather,” tayta Mariano vividly detailed.149 President Fortunato described Chávez’s weapon with comparable precision: “So, the verga of the bull was crooked and [Chávez] would hit people with it[.]”150 Elders Ernestina and Inocencio also

remembered the verga well. “He would lash a chicote as if [acting on the authority of]

148 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

149 Ibid.

150 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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the bible,” mama Ernestina recalled. “Comisaría,” her husband interjected, adding, “It

was a bull’s penis.” Remembering her manners, mama Ernestina set the record straight,

“I—I never touched it, I only saw it.” The campesina elder then raised her arm and made

broad strokes in the air, “He would take it out and whip it like this.” Intrigued, Julián

asked, “How many lashes would he give?” “Two or three times,” she recalled. She then

looked at Julián and me and explained, “For example, if you two were in a rage and

nobody minded you then you could say, either verbally or by way of the chicote, ‘listen up and do as we say!’”151 I must admit that I took offense when she used Julián and me

in her example of people who might readily castigate a huaychaino. After all, she could have just as easily gotten her point across by painting herself and her husband as the

hypothetical “bad guys.” It was only after some reflection that I realized that her

example made perfect sense. After all, Julián and I were urban dressed, Spanish-

speaking outsiders. For all intents and purposes, we were, as the chuschinos say, qalas.

As such, we fit the profile of power holders who during the days of the hacienda would not only have been willing to submit indigenous campesinos to such brutal treatment, but who had the de facto right to do so.

For most huaychainos, receiving two or three lashes with a whip fashioned out of a bull’s penis paled in comparison to the alternative punishment: eviction from the hacienda.152 Mama Ernestina explained that Chávez personally expelled peasants who

“did not follow his orders.” She recalled that the hacendado evicted one unfortunate

151 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

152 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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campesino who lost one of his fifty or so sheep.153 Likewise, President Fortunato and tayta Esteban claimed that when beating his laborers did not work, Chávez expelled deviant thieves, rapists, and witches from his hacienda. “He evicted them but not before

[trying to correct their behavior by] hitting them with the verga,” tayta Esteban explained, “First he’d take away their chacra and then he’d expel them, saying, ‘There shouldn’t be people like this inside [my hacienda.]’” According to President Fortunato,

Chávez felt that such social outcasts were “dirtying up” his hacienda with their poor conduct.154 President Fortunato remembered one particular campesino whom Chávez cast out “to a place where nobody works.” When asked why, the communal President reasoned, “[B]ecause he was a lazy person and…because he was a thief who stole everyone else’s finest things. He was lazy and he reaped everyone else’s harvests. He was also lazy and the hacendado kicked him out because he didn’t want to put up with all that; he kicked him out with the crack of a whip.”155

While perhaps over the top, huaychainos did not see Chávez’s system of justice as unreasonable. Mama Ernestina assured us that Chávez only resorted to the verga “for serious offenses.”156 President Fortunato agreed: “[Chávez] ruled the hacienda, he was respected, because on his hacienda there were no thieves, rapists, nor witches, because if there were he would punish people with his whip [made] of a bull’s penis[.]”157 Later in

153 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

154 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006)

155 Ibid.

156 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

157 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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the conversation, we asked tayta Esteban and him if they ever reported incidents of

robbery to the Justice of the Peace in nearby Carhuahurán. “Only after the hacienda

[days],” he said. During the hacienda period, tayta Esteban added, “the patrón would

flog [the thieves] and [the robbing] ended right then and there.”158 When we asked

President Fortunato and tayta Esteban if they felt that Chávez was a “good hacendado,”

the former replied, “He was good for the good people, bad for the bad people.” “In other words,” tayta Esteban clarified, “he gave good land to obedient people, but he expelled

the disobedient ones with a chicote and gave their chacra to someone else.” President

Fortunato reiterated, “He only hit disobedient people with his chicote and he loved the

obedient ones like a father.” “Patrón, patrón,” tayta Esteban affirmed with a nod of the

head. President Fortunato continued, “Also, his arrendatarios [tenants] obeyed him as if

they were his child [sic].”159

It is difficult to tell whether or not the hacendado’s actions actually curbed the kinds of social problems for which huaychainos accredited him. While I found no comparable petitions from Chávez, a letter penned to the departmental Prefect by Mario

Cavalcanti Gamboa, owner of the adjacent Huaynacancha hacienda, indicated that cattle- rustling was a serious problem in the zone in 1967. It is worth mentioning that

Cavalcanti became a prominent agitator for peasant political mobilizations at the time, his subsequent arrest sparking the Huanta uprising of 1969. This, of course, further supports the thesis about the political and social pacts between regional hacendados and

158 Ibid.

159 Ibid.

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peasants.160 At the time he petitioned the Prefect, however, Cavalcanti seemed more concerned with cattle theft on his estate. While he did not specify Huaychao, he did mention that abigeato had become a problem in Macabamba, Huaynacancha, and several other neighboring estates. Such activity, he wrote, “has made it impossible for the inhabitants of the neighboring fundos [estates] as well as my own.” Included in the petition was a request for the creation of the position of Lieutenant Governor on the

Huaynacancha hacienda “to protect all the inhabitants from the flagrance of cattle rustling.”161 Why did the hacendado not include Huaychao in his list of affected haciendas? Was it because Huaychao, with its Lieutenant Governor and authoritarian hacendado, had successfully eradicated abigeato? Or, perhaps the problem did exist in

Huaychao and the Huaynacancha baron had simply omitted to mention the neighboring estate. In the end, it is irrelevant whether cattle rustling was a problem on the Huaychao hacienda before the Agrarian Reform, for what matters is the belief held by most huaychainos that their mestizo proprietor had mitigated the problem with his intimidating and brutal administration of justice.

Aside from administering justice effectively, huaychainos felt that Chávez understood the implicit code of reciprocity that underlay Andean power relations.

President Fortunato and tayta Esteban described this exchange. After extracting what they needed for their household subsistence, the peones would deposit the remaining potato crops in a storage house at the edge of the village square. Periodically, they emptied the storage and delivered the tubers to the hacendado’s Huanta City residence

160 I thank Jaymie Patricia Heilman for making this important connection.

161 ASH, 1967, Solicitud del propietario del fundo de Huaynacancha ante el Prefecto (22 May 1967).

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“so that the patrón could eat.”162 As children, President Fortunato and tayta Esteban watched as don Rafael’s overseer delivered molle, chicha, and cane liquor to the adult

workers on the hacienda. President Fortunato recollected, “Back then we children didn’t drink, but the adults did drink. The kids just watched.” Children did receive food from the hacendado, however. Gesturing towards tayta Esteban and then touching his own

chest, President Fortunato explained, “The two of us got our share [of food], because in

those days our parents worked on the hacienda and we had our own chacra.”163 Tayta

Esteban specified that, children aside, “only those who worked, and not those who didn’t

work” received these meals and refreshments—this was not charity, but the completion

of an informal reciprocal pact. Chávez’s brother, who owned the neighboring

Macabamba hacienda, also reciprocated his workers. Sometimes, peasants from

Huaychao would labor on Rafael’s brother’s hacienda just for the chicha. “Yeah, I used

to go Macabamba to drink chicha” tayta Mariano remembered, “[The hacendado] would

treat thirteen of us from Huaychao, Purus, Huaynacancha, etc., to chicha. We’d all go

and work for chicha, not money.”164

Finally, the patrón respected, and even reinforced, traditional gender roles. When

we asked mama Ernestina and tayta Inocencio to describe their former employer, the

former assured us, “Ah, he was a good man” while the latter nodded his head. Pressed to

expand her answer, mama Ernestina began discussing the gendered division of labor

under Chávez: “[He was good when it came to] our semanero; in allowing the widows to

162 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

163 Ibid.

164 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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[travel to Huanta City to] weave, dry potatoes, and other things. We are better off now

for it. The widows would go to Huanta. The married women were semaneras to prepare

the corn and firewood.165 Under this system, then, widows had a valued social function.

Huaychaino men did not seem to mind that the hacendado put married women to

work in traditional roles: cooking, grazing cattle, and weaving. Nor did it bother them

that the widows were the ones sent to Huanta City to carry water and wash clothes for the

hacendado.166 More importantly, they boasted about the ways in which Chávez rewarded

displays of masculinity from his male workers. President Fortunato and tayta Esteban recalled that Chávez would organize work competitions between ten or twenty male workers from Huaychao, Macabamba, and neighboring Iquichano territories to see who

could best work the hacendado’s fallow lands. “That’s where the best man wins [ahí tira

el que tira],” President Fortunato asserted with a boyish grin. “The winner walked away

an overseer [capitán], and he who couldn’t hack it was left behind,” tayta Esteban

snickered.167 Even in their old age, the former field hands could not contain their pride

when thinking back on the friendly male competition of their youth.

Women in Huaychao assured us that the patriarch never laid a hand on his female

tenants. But did he speak to them as disparagingly as he did his male workers?

“Manam,” mama Ernestina rebuffed, “He didn’t chew out [resondrar] the women, only the widows who didn’t mind his orders. And he expelled anyone who didn’t mind his

165 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

166 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán. Huaychao, 5 February 2006; Interview with Mariano Quispe. Huaychao (7 February 2006).

167 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán. Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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orders.”168 She therefore accepted that a mestizo lord would verbally abuse widows,

provided that (1) he did not physically harm them, and (2) they had merited his reprimand

by failing to carry out his orders. Sitting at the edge of a cliff overlooking her cattle as

they grazed the valley below, mama Brigida confirmed that Rafael Chávez did not

physically abuse huaychaina women; he left that task to his wife. Mama Brigida was

born and raised on the Huaychao hacienda, which made her a teenager during the 1940s

when the patrona began slapping her around and whipping her with a chicote: “In those

days we used to cook pig in a big pot and we couldn’t carry the pig, so she’d hit us.”

While mama Brigida certainly did not appreciate the abuse, she did not condemn it either,

explaining that it served a correctional and developmental purpose: “I was

probably…thirteen years old, and that’s why she hit me, because when you’re a little girl

you can’t do things as well. But no one’s going to hit me now, because now I can cook

well with vegetables.”169 Mama Brigida would probably not have been as understanding

had Rafael Chávez been the one hitting huaychaina women. Not even the men faulted

Mrs. Chávez for hitting her female tenants. Their major complaint was that she refused

to reciprocate their work. According to tayta Mariano, the patrona would sometimes visit the hacienda with her husband and eat full meals in front of the workers, having them fetch her water, prepare the firewood, and cook the food. “People would grumble,

…‘Why doesn’t Rafael Chávez’s señora offer us some, seeing as how we are here watching [her eat] and we’re starving to death?’…That’s how she’d make us suffer.”170

168 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

169 Interview with Brigida Cayetano, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

170 Interview with Mirano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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The only person we interviewed who had nothing positive to say of the Chávezes

was mama Alejandra. Sitting on a stump outside of her hilltop choza overlooking the village square, mama Alejandra gave us a cynic’s perspective of Rafael Chávez. For her, the hacendado had violated the structural principles of Andean patron-client relationships. “The patrón was bossy,” she complained, “Every three months he would come [to Huaychao] and identify the piglets that were on his chacra and say, ‘The piglets are destroying my chacra,’ and once they grew he would take them with him.” Aside from taking what was not rightfully his, the landowner made unreasonable demands of his male workers. “There was suffering. That Rafael Chávez was repressive because he made the men work like slaves and he hit them and treated them like slaves.” Mama

Alejandra also felt that Chávez was unfair towards his women tenants. “He would say of

the young widows who could not keep up with the men: ‘Get rid of her, carajo! Force

her to marry a widower on the condition that they both work, carajo! Otherwise, she can

take a hike, carajo!’ Oh, how he didn’t care for the widows and single mothers!” She

went on to say that the punishments Chávez meted out were unfair. Rather than

punishing social outcasts and deviants, as her neighbors described, she remembered that

he would reprimand and expel anyone who could not keep up with the demanding

workload: “He’d chew us out: ‘Work faster, carajo, or get off [my hacienda]!’ And he’d

kick them out just like that. …He’d kick them, [hit them] with a verga, and if they

protested he’d kick them out. …He’d kick out people who were already dying.” She

invoked one instance in which Chávez evicted an arrendatario and his entire family

“because he didn’t do things well.” As far as she was concerned, the hacendado was also unequipped to resolve any of Huaychao’s internal conflicts. “Only the teniente resolved

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those problems,” she said, “The hacendado didn’t know how to. …And besides, there

were tenientes and varayoqs [resolving those problems] long before [Chávez’s tenure].”

Rocking her body back and forth with her arms folded to keep warm under the dense fog,

mama Alejandra declared: “He was far too bad, that patrón.”171

For mama Alejandra, then, Rafael Chávez had broken the culturally defined social

pact. First, he mistreated the reciprocal patron-client relationship, treating his peones like

virtual slaves. Second, he had failed in his paternalistic obligation to provide for, protect, and respect the most socially and economically vulnerable tenants, namely, the widows, single mothers, and elders (people who were ‘already dying,’). Finally, his administration of justice was unreasonable and ineffective in upholding public order.

However, while mama Alejandra’s opinion illustrates the heterogeneity of villagers’

perceptions regarding their former hacendado, hers was also a minority opinion in

Huaychao, for most men and women felt that in spite of his mean streak, Rafael Chávez

had respected this culturally defined social pact and upheld internal order on the

hacienda.172

Changes in Land Tenure: 1963-1976

In late 1962, Chávez sold the hacienda to Enrique Juscamaita, a mestizo proprietor from Huamanga who already owned a hacienda in Montehuasi (La Mar Province), for

75,000 soles.173 If huaychainos spoke of Chávez with respect, their collective memory of

171 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

172 Ibid.

173 AMAA, Exp. Huaychao, Escritura de compraventa (15 November 1962).

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Juscamaita was nothing short of flattering. Tayta Inocencio described Juscamaita as

“allinmi runakuna.”174 Of course, this praise was coming from an indigenous elder who

had painted the previous hacendado in a similar light. Yet even Rafael Chávez’s most

vocal critics spoke affectionately of Juscamaita. For instance, tayta Isidro, who had only

reluctantly described Chávez as bad “in a sense,” said, “Juscamaita was good, but we

only were with him for a short time, maybe three or four years.”175 Tayta Mariano, who previously had detailed Chávez’s harsh treatment towards his arrendatarios, said of

Juscamaita, “He was a good man. …Folks around here have nothing but kind words to say of him[.]”176 Not even mama Alejandra criticized the new landowner, saying only

that huaychainos “entered a period of peace” when Chávez sold the hacienda to

Juscamaita.177

Huaychainos held Juscamaita in such high esteem because he not only met their

cultural expectations for a mestizo overlord, but he exceeded them by keeping at a

distance and refraining from physical, verbal, or psychological violence.

For starters, he did not meddle in their affairs, as some of Chuschi’s power holders had done. Mama Alejandra reported, “Mr. Juscamaita never even came here…he only came once to reap his potato crops when we got the news from Lima that there was a law saying that the hacienda had been terminated.”178 “He only came over here once,”

174 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

175 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006). Juscamaita actually owned the hacienda for about ten years longer than Huamán credited him for.

176 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

177 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

178 Ibid.

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tayta Mariano concurred, “…After he came that one time we never saw Enrique [in

Huaychao] again.”179 Thus, unlike Chávez, who seemed to get his kicks sneaking up on his indigenous workers to catch them slacking off, Juscamaita did not feel the need to

supervise their every move. This of course gave them even more liberty to work at their

own pace and engage in Andean cultural practices.

Like his predecessor, Juscamaita also appreciated Andean codes of reciprocity.

Tayta Inocencio said that Juscamaita “was a good person and he used to treat us to

aguardiente in Montehuasi.”180 President Fortunato also recalled travelling in groups of

two or three tenants at a time to Juscamaita’s Montehuasi hacienda to pick up a helping

of coca leaves and half an arroba of aguardiente from their mestizo lord.181 Chewing on

a handful of coca leaves, tayta Mariano later elucidated this last point: “[W]e would just

take [our] potato [harvests] to Tambo, but when we got there, Enrique would wait for us

and give us bottles of trago.” After making this statement, the former field hand leaned

back and murmured with a crooked smile, “He sure was good, that patrón, he didn’t

chew us out.”182

If huaychainos viewed Rafael Chávez as strict, then they saw Enrique Juscamaita

as compassionate. Both were acceptable characteristics for a mestizo patriarch, but the

latter was understandably preferred. Tayta Mariano told us that Juscamaita “was a good man, and he didn’t use a verga,” while tayta Inocencio underscored his paternalistic

179 Interview with Mariano Quispe. Huaychao (7 February 2006).

180 Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

181 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

182 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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affection for his indigenous arrendatarios: “He would come up to us and embrace us,

saying, ‘Are you well, huaychainos?’”183 Tayta Isidro also appreciated Juscamaita’s genuine concern for his arrendatarios. When tayta Isidro was a young man, he and a group of four or five huaychainos would labor for a day at a time on Juscamaita’s

Montehuasi hacienda. With a shy grin, tayta Isidro shared his memories of those days:

“He would let us work, then pay us and ask us: ‘Are you all well in Huaychao?’ and we would say, ‘We are well, señor.’”184

Given that so few huaychainos objected to the hacienda system, and even fewer to

their new landlord Enrique Juscamaita, they initially had mixed feelings about the

Agrarian Reform, which reached Huaychao in 1975 and was completed there a year later.185 Now, it is possible that at least some huaychainos were catalysts of a larger

regional movement that had been challenging the hacienda system throughout the

1960s.186 Identifying those protagonists has been difficult, however, for in addition to an

absence of historical documentation regarding huaychaino participation in the regional

movement, villagers themselves came up with few specifics regarding who fought for the

reform and how.187 Instead, villagers with whom we spoke in 2006 and 2007 made

sweeping statements such as “it was hard” and “we all fought for the change.” Such

183 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006); Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

184 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

185 AMAA, Exp. Huaychao, Resolución Directorial de afectación del predio de Huaychao (5 June 1975); ACSJA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 143, Expropriación de Huaychao (1976).

186 For a more nuanced discussion of this land movement in highland Huanta, see Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

187 A noteworthy exception is the figure of Jesús Ccente, described in chapter one.

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generic statements may tell us less about the historical facts than about the manner in

which post-Agrarian Reform huayhainos’ used collective memory to insert themselves

into historical narratives about the origins of the Land Reform in Huaychao. A greater

number embraced the concept of huaychainos collectively owning their land. Thinking

back on the significance of the land reform for huaychainos, the tayta Esteban boasted,

“The hacendado left this [hacienda] and the grupo campesino was created. The

[hacienda] work also ended and the people were happy that they were no longer obligated to work. …Now we only worked for ourselves, we no longer had to serve the hacendado at all.” The former arrendatario leaned back and sighed, “Ah, we said, ‘[Thank]

Jesus…for the rest!’”188

Perhaps sensing that his compoblano was getting too melodramatic, President

Fortunato interrupted: “But there were people who were close to the hacendado. …There

were many…maybe half.” Intrigued, we asked him why this was. “Because,” he replied,

“they were close. [The hacendado] gave them food and that’s why they were on [his]

side. …They said, ‘We were just fine [on the hacienda].” Hearing this, tayta Esteban

leaned forward and added, “The patrón was like their father and they hated those of us

who opposed [him], and [they said,] ‘Now we won’t be happy anymore,’ and we would

all fight over it.”189 Tayta Isidro later confirmed this story: “Some people took the

[hacendado’s] side. For example, those in [the annex] Ccochaccocha kept defending [the

hacienda system] and the hacendado left them some things [after he left].”190

188 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

189 Ibid.

190 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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Women also had their reservations about the change in land tenure. Mama

Brigida spoke candidly of her uneasiness when she learned that Huaychao would become a peasant collectivity. It was not that she was opposed to the idea of owning her own land. On the contrary, she felt that it was “good” to have land for the sake of the peasant household: “because our children eat from it. When someone dies like me, since I’m already an elder, then my grandchildren will be able to eat by [tilling] the land.” At the time, however, she and her neighbors worried that dismantling the hacienda would also bring down the sense of internal order and security that they associated with it: “People said, ‘What will happen now, what will become of us?’ ‘Surely we’ll fight amongst each other and take [each other’s] land’—that’s what I thought.” When we asked her if she felt that closing the hacienda had been a good thing, she rebuffed, “Manam, because it created confusion.”191 Even mama Alejandra, the most vocal critic of the hacienda and the one campesina who had characterized the mode of production on Chávez’s hacienda as “slavery,” described her ambivalence at the time: “The people [of Huaychao] said

‘that’s nice,’ and we were happy. But at the same time we worried, ‘Now what’s going to happen?’”192

Thus, far from being united in their appreciation of the Agrarian Reform, men and women in Huaychao were conflicted over the change. On the one hand, they now had the liberty to work their own land without the constraints of a naturally exploitative land tenure system. On the other hand, they feared surrendering some of the securities that

191 Interview with Brigida Cayetano, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

192 Interview with Alejandra Ccente. Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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that system had offered them, including the paternalistic authority of the mestizo patriarch

and the public order that they associated with it.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This chapter has complicated conventional narratives that cast indigenous-mestizo

relationships as naturally and universally antagonistic by underscoring the localized nuances of those relationships. To be sure, race relations in pre-insurgency Chuschi and

Huaychao were power-laden. How these relationships played out and shaped indigenous peasant consciousness over time contrasted greatly between the two locales, however.

Hacendado-campesino relations in Huaychao did not generate widespread hostilities. One reason for this is that huaychainos at the time were convinced of the futility of any efforts to ameliorate their condition: they expected non-indigenous patrones to be oppressive, and Peruvian laws were fixed against them. More importantly, most huaychainos believed that their former estate owners had stayed within the parameters of the implicit social pact. With few exceptions, huaychainos respected

Rafael Chávez’s authority and capacity to uphold internal order. Both of these perceptions were symbolized in the verga. On the one hand, the whip reinforced the notion of the hacendado’s patriarchal authority—he was, to put it shrewdly, the man with the “biggest penis” who could use it to emasculate other men by cracking it on their backs. On the other hand, the whip’s nickname of “La Comisaría” discursively reinforced the notion that it somehow had the capacity to uphold internal order and

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justice on the hacienda.193 Thus, while acknowledging that the mestizo’s system of

justice was intimidating and flamboyant, many huaychainos agreed that it generally worked. They also appreciated his respect for traditional gender roles and norms. Later, they admired Enrique Juscamaita’s paternalistic affection and concern for his arrendatarios. On the whole, the two hacendados had respected tenants’ cultural autonomy when it came to customary government and practices. They also reciprocated their peones’ moral economy by supplying them with food, alcoholic beverages, and coca leaves in addition to unfixed wages. Because of these sentiments, huaychainos had mixed feelings when the Agrarian Reform Law dismantled the hacienda. But the

Agrarian Reform did not only affect relationships between mestizos and indígenas. As we will see in the following chapter, it also impacted inter-village dynamics.

In Chuschi, by contrast, a mounting crisis of authority foreshadowed the Shining

Path insurgency, as comuneros became increasingly dissatisfied with the qalakunas’ ability to respect this culturally defined social pact. Qala notables’ first flaw had to do with leadership. Villagers complained over and over again that their qala authorities had failed them when it came to overseeing the successful completion of communal works projects. Andean villagers expected their leaders to protect them and their collective interests, but mestizo leaders seemed more concerned with safeguarding their private interests than those of the community. Third, they interfered with indigenous customs and practices, contracting indigenous varayoqs for personal activities and imposing taxes for marriages and festivals. Fourth, they violated traditional codes of reciprocal exchange. Finally, they represented a double standard in the administration of justice,

193 I thank Ponciano Del Pino and Jaymie Patricia Heilman for their insights regarding the discursive function of the verga.

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whereby they could submit comuneros to arbitrary justice while at the same time

escaping punishment for their own infractions.

One might ask how, given the tenuous power relations and multiple “crises” that

developed between 1940 and 1980, chuschino society remained in-tact without any major

social ruptures. Put another way, how was it that these conflicts could exist for so long

without fomenting widespread social and political unrest? As Mallon, Heilman, and Del

Pino observe, the perception of external threats can often have a unifying effect within

Andean peasant communities, prompting villagers to put long-term antagonisms on hold

temporarily, or at least to hold off on radically redressing them until either the threat is

extinguished or political opportunities change.194 This is precisely what took place in

Chushci, and as we will see in the following chapter, chuschinos found this external

threat in the neighboring village of Quispillaccta.

194 Mallon, Peasant and Nation; Heilman, “By Other Means,” ch. 4; Del Pino, “Looking to the Government,” and personal correspondence (15 February 2008).

Chapter Three: Beyond the Rivers and Mountains

InterCommunity Relations and Conflict

Chuschi River trickles down from the foot of Mount Condorccacca, flowing

northward from Piedra Redonda through the village of Chuschi. On the other side of this

river, just a stone’s throw away, is the hamlet of Quispillaccta. Although Quispillaccta

President Emilio Núñez Conde admitted to the Juez de Tierras (Land Court Judge) in

1981 that Chuschi and Quispillaccta were separated geographically by “an insignificant

stream,”1 the historically rooted political rift between the two villages was quite

significant.

This chapter explores the sources of inter-community conflict in Chuschi and

Huaychao. The first section reconstructs the contentious relationship between Chuschi

and Quispillaccta and its meaning to indigenous chuschinos and quispillacctinos. I describe the rivalry as an inter-ethnic struggle for control over land, livestock, women, and religious symbols. Turning from Chuschi to Huaychao, the second section shows that the Iquichano village did not have such a clear rival. Instead, huaychainos were

involved in ephemeral conflicts with members from several nearby communities, never

focusing their energies on a single foe. These sporadic disputes tended to involve

individual households rather than entire villages, thus resembling the types of conflicts

1 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Informe de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (12 October 1981).

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that also prevailed inside the village. More importantly, huaychainos had strong kinship

and social networks which tied them to other Iquichano villages and mitigated the kind of

“us-them” dichotomy that took hold in Chuschi.

‘AN INSIGNIFICANT STREAM’: INTER-COMMUNITY CONFLICT IN CHUSCHI AND QUISPILLACCTA

In this section, I will explore the origins and nature of the historic rivalry between

the indigenous peasant villages of Chuschi and Quispillaccta. As we will see, the enmity

was instense and multi-faceted, rooted in local understandings about land, gender,

religion, ethnicity, and community. Moreover, it was one that remained strong in each

community’s collective consciousness up through the early years of the Shining Path

insurgency.

Testing the Waters: Quispillaccta Objects to Chuschi’s Official Recognition

In late 1940 Quispillaccta authorities discovered that comuneros and authorities

from Chuschi had petitioned Indigenous Affairs for legal recognition as a comunidad

indígena (indigenous community), a recognition that afforded villagers certain collective

economic and political rights vis-à-vis the central government.2 This would not have

been a problem, the quispillacctinos assured the Prefect, were it not for the fact that the boundaries the chuschinos had drawn up for federal approval included territories that had

2 For more on the history of the Indigenous Affairs body and its policies towards indigenous communities, see Thomas Davies, Jr. Indian Integration in Peru: A Half Century of Experience, 1900-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974 [1970]).

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belonged to them “since time immemorial.”3 In a letter penned to the General Director of

Indigenous Affairs, the quispillacctinos tried to appeal to the state’s paternalistic

sympathies, implying that, if anything, they, not the chuschinos, were the ones in need of

state protection: “[The chuschinos] are taking advantage of our ignorance and humble

condition [,] they being from the district capital and having many citizens with a certain

level of education who use [their education] to extort [sic] the indigenous masses.”4 The petitioners added that the chuschinos had recently invaded their territories under the cover of darkness, remaining there until the next morning, when Quispillaccta residents

“repelled the attack and forced them off our invaded lands.” Such behavior was intolerable, the petitioners insisted, warning that they had “resolved to defend [—] even if it costs us our lives [—] our only patrimony [,] which will be for our children [to inherit].”5

It took a special hearing between village attorneys6 at the Indigenous Affairs

headquarters in Lima on 19 May of the following year to resolve the dispute. The Chief

of the Administrative Section decided to send a Visitador de Ramo (Divisional Visitor) to

the disputed territories to settle the matter. The attorneys signed an accord promising to

keep their clients from “making changes to [innovar] the lands they had in their

3 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (27 September 1940).

4 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (15 August 1940). Emphasis added.

5 Ibid.

6 I use the terms “attorney,” “counsel,” and “lawyer” loosely, referring to peasant notables who represented their communities in matters of territorial litigation. These individuals were the mid-twentieth-century equivalent of community Presidents, and they rarely possessed any education above high school, much less a degree to practice law.

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possession.”7 The villagers waited and waited, but the Visitador never came. On 1

August, Quispillaccta’s indigenous heads of household penned another letter to the

Director of Indigenous Affairs requesting the inspector’s immediate presence, since over

two months had passed since his inspection had been promised.8 Visitador Luis F.

Aguilar finally arrived at the scene two months later. According to his official report,

Aguilar proposed: (1) to draw an imaginary line down the middle of the disputed territory—which made up a total area ten by four kilometers—and divide it equally between the two villages; (2) that the families of each community currently residing inside the contested zone would continue to live there “without malice and tolerating the reciprocal passing of their livestock without imposing or reclaiming any herbs”; and (3) that the territories would remain in the same physical state, shared “pro individuo” by the two villages.”9 Community representatives agreed to the terms of the resolution, signing

an Acta de Conciliación (Act of Conciliation) on 21 October 1941. Indigenous Affairs

made this resolution official on 17 November, vowing “to monitor the strict observation”

of these stipulations and to impose a fine of up to 2,000 soles on anyone who breached

the accord. The bureau applauded its own efforts at reaching a “transactional [sic] and amicable solution to the conflict,” a resolution it believed to reflect the “indigenist politics of the Government.”10 With the stroke of a pen, the bureau closed the case in

7 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (19 May 1941).

8 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (1 August 1941).

9 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (21 October 1941); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1960, 25 exp .), Exp. 39.

10 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (17 November 1941).

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1941, claiming to have reached a “definitive end” to the heated inter-community

conflict.11

Had it? In April 1953, eighty quispillacctinos issued a letter to the Provincial

Council, the Cangallo Subprefect, and the Ayacucho Prefect demanding their village’s full political and economic autonomy from the district capital. They claimed that despite having invested labor and money into public works such as the building of a co-ed school in the district and the improvement of the Chuschi-Quispillaccta bridge, Chuschi’s officials and comuneros had failed to meet their end of the construction agreement.12 In

order to avoid such problems in the future and ensure that the works would be completed,

the solicitors argued, they would need the legal authority to allocate public funds where

they saw fit. After hearing their request, provincial authorities granted the village

economic and administrative autonomy.13

These initial contestations demonstrate the centrality of indigenous peasants’

material concerns to inter-village tensions. As we will see, struggles over material

possessions, namely land and livestock, remained at the forefront of the discursive battle

between Chuschi and Quispillaccta for the next forty years. And this was not a recent

development. In their early works, anthropologists Billie Jean Isbell, John Earls, and

Irene Silveblatt have chronicled territorial disputes between Quispillaccta and Chuschi

11 Ibid.

12 As mentioned in chapter two, the chuschinos also blamed their qala authorities for failing to see these projects through to completion.

13 AGN, MI, PA 1953, Solicitud del pueblo de Quispillaccta sobre autonomía económica y administrative municipal (15 April 1985).

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dating as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries!14 Nor was this unique to

Chuschi District. Heraclio Bonilla has illustrated the centrality of communal territoriality

to litigation in mid-20th-century Huamanga province, while historians such as Christine

Hünefeldt and Florencia Mallon have emphasized the centrality of the land question to

legal and extralegal peasant activism across highland Peru.15 Given the strong

association between territorial ownership and communal integrity in indigenous peasant

villages, it was perhaps naïve of Indigenous Affairs to believe that it could eradicate

inter-village strife through imaginary lines and legal decrees.

Fording the Waters: Early Altercations

Records of major territorial discrepancies between the two villages did in fact

subside following the peace accord. Litigation resurfaced less than twenty years later,

however, with representatives from both villages charging that their adversaries had

never really respected the truce. On 29 November 1959, Quispillaccta counsel Mamerto

Pariona issued a letter to the Cangallo Subprefect alleging that earlier that morning a group of chuschinos, riding on horseback and using work tools as weapons, had stormed past the imaginary line into the territory of Accopampa. Pariona requested that the

Subprefect take legal action against the invaders, warning that his clients had already

14 See Billie Jean Isbell, “Andean Structures and Activities: Towards a Study of Transformations of Traditional Concepts in a Central Highland Peasant Community,” (Ph.D. diss., in Anthropology, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, 1973); John Earls and Irene Silverblatt, “Ayllus y etnías en la región Pampas-Qaracha: El impacto del imperio incaico,” Investigaciones 2, no. 2. Revista de Ciencias Históricos- Sociales (Ayacucho: UNSCH, 1979): 267-282.

15 See Hünefeldt, Lucha por la tierra; Mallon, The Defense of Community, esp. 82; Heraclio Bonilla, “La defensa del espacio comunal como fuente de conflicto: San Juan de Ocros vs. Pampas (Ayacucho), 1940- 1970” (Documento de Trabajo No. 34, Lima:Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1989).

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armed a “communal mass” to force the chuschinos off their land.16 Apparently, this was

not the first time that the 1941 accord had been breached. On 6 May 1960, over thirty

comuneros and officials from Quispillaccta signed a letter addressed to the General

Director of Indigenous Affairs alleging that in addition to “committing a series of

offenses such as the violation of our women,” the chuschinos had infringed upon several

parcels of their land in recent years. In 1957, for example, they had invaded the territory

of Loreta.17 The following year they added Suyoccacca, Amacuyo, Natillapuquio, and

Ticlautapuquio to the list of usurped lands; they even laid claim to the quispillacctinos’

irrigation water. The letter went on to allege that in 1959, the chuschinos began planting crops, constructing houses, and grazing plots of land with the quispillacctinos’ own livestock.18

The chuschinos had their own grievances to report, though. On 29 November

1959, indigenous comunero Gonzalo Rocha Huamaní solicited the Subprefect for

guarantees against Pariona himself. Rocha claimed that it was the quispillacctinos,

through the counsel of Pariona, who were in the wrong: “[T]hey want to strip me of my

terrain called Huacctacancha, which rests within the boundaries of Chuschi, and these

comuneros want to appropriate the fraction that belongs to Chuschi.” This had been

going on for some time, Rocha maintained: “[E]very year they take my potato, broad

bean, and barley crops, they even directly threaten to take my life. …[W]hy as recently as

16 ARA, SC, Caja 17, Of. Chuschi 1960 (29 November 1959).

17 By “invasion,” the plaintiffs in this and subsequent cases implied any forceful occupation of the land in question.

18 APETT, Exp. Chuschi (6 May 1960).

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the month of August, they mistreated me[,] declaring that they would cut my life short if I

didn’t kindly vacate the aforementioned terrain.”19

Not knowing whose version of events to believe, and no doubt hoping to buy

enough time to assess the situation, the office of the Cangallo Subprefect in December

1959 ordered the authorities and attorneys from both communities to have their constituents “abstain from exacting damages and invasions” in the disputed territories

until the completion of an official investigation.20

Villagers grew impatient waiting for an official response. According to the

official accusation of Nilo Hinojosa, Fiscal of the Superior Court of Ayacucho, the

chuschinos cemented their claim over the disputed territory by erecting a chapel at

Lachocc on 27 March 1960. The quispillacctinos responded by attempting to erect their

own chapel in the same location.21 When their nemeses prevented them from doing this, the quispillacctinos responded with what Chuschi counsel Braulio Pacotaipe deemed

“punishable and shameful acts.”22 On 30 and 31 March, he explained, villagers from

Quispillaccta, led by their communal authorities, invaded the sites of Accoccasa,

Lachocc, Yuracc-coral, Pallcca, and Ingahuasi, forcing off the small number of

chuschinos residing there. When the evicted chuschinos informed their communal

leaders of the incident, the latter set out to confront the squatters. On 1 April, Chuschi

19 ARA, SC, Caja 17, Of. Chuschi 1960 (7 December 1959).

20 Ibid.

21 ARA, CSJ-JP Víctor Fajardo., Sin Leg. (1969, 14 exp.), Exp. 685. This allegation was disputed by the chuschinos, who claimed to have constructed it over forty years prior to the incident. See ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1960, 25 Leg.), Exp. 40.

22 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Solicitud de Braulio Pacotaipe al Inspector Regional de Asuntos Indígenas (2 April 1960).

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leaders found the quispillacctino authorities waiting for them, along with a mob of 700 comuneros. After a brief verbal exchange, the quispillacctinos began hurling sticks and stones at the chuschino leaders, forcing them to run for their lives.23

The rabble made its way over to the site of the newly erected chapel in Lachocc,

Pacotaipe continued. Without hesitation, the invaders forced open the door of the

building and stormed in. They robbed the chapel of its gold and silver ornaments, to be

sure, but what they had really come for was something that money could not buy: the

patron-saint of the church of Chuschi, La Virgen Santa Rosa de Lima. They found la

Virgen inside a wooden case.24 She was only sixty-five centimeters tall and forty-five

centimeters wide, but her beauty undoubtedly overshadowed her stature. Her body was

draped in fine white silk, a black cloth cape cloaked over her delicate shoulders. Her

front side was laced with golden thread, and her rosary was adorned with white pearls.25

Relic in hand, the looters vacated the premises—one wonders if they ever stopped to admire their prize’s beauty before setting the roof on fire. When all was said and done,

Pacotaipe and his comunero clients later lamented, the chapel had been destroyed quite literally “from the foundation” (“desde los cimientos”). The quispillacctinos then took la santa back to their community before delivering it to the Bishop in Ayacucho City.26

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1960, 25 exp.), Exp. 40, Informe de los peritos sobre el valor de la Virgen de Santa Rosa (23 June 1960).

26 The chuschino accusers speculated that the quispillacctinos had turned the icon over to the Bishop as proof that they were the rightful owners of the disputed territory, but it is unclear why such a gesture would have constituted such proof. A more reasonable explanation is that the quispillacctinos simply did not want to risk the chuschinos recovering the saint. Regardless, the Bishop returned the saint to the chuschinos, and as of July 2007 it remained on display in their main Cathedral, located at the edge of the village square.

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Meanwhile, the quispillacctinos set up camp in Lachocc, sacking the homes of thirty

chuschino residents and robbing household goods and work tools. On 3 April, the

invaders finally left Lachocc for Yuracc-coral. There, they rustled cattle, raided the

homes of the ten chuschino families who lived there, and destroyed another chapel. The

invaders occupied Lachocc and Yuracc-coral for several days without resistance.27

The chuschinos and their attorney charged that the attacks did not end there, adding that on 5 April a throng of some six thousand quispillacctino men and women went about ransacking Chuschi territory. They first seized the lands of Suyuccacca, whose residents had already fled. One of the residents whose hut was attacked was the indigenous comunero Miguel Pacotaipe.28 As discussed below, Pacotaipe would become

a central figure in the upcoming conflicts between the two communities. The horde

obliterated yet another small chapel, along with the humble dwellings of four chuschino

residents. They then made their way to Qenhua, once again finding the site abandoned.

After destroying the homes of three more locals, the mob headed toward Tapaccocha,

where they found the chuschinos in full retreat. After looting and pillaging the site and

destroying the homes of six more comuneros, the crowd turned to Quimsacruz, where

they easily routed a small chuschino defense. They encountered stiffer resistance in

Pachanca in a high-noon battle that left over half a dozen chuschinos injured.

Meanwhile, back in Lachocc, where the dust had barely settled from the eruption of five days prior, another battle was underway. This time, a horde of some 2,000

27 ARA, CSJ-JP Sin Leg. (1960, 25 exp.), Exp. 40, Instrucción contra Fidel Conde y otros por el delito de lesiones, incendio, y robo (26 April 1960).

28 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1960, 25 exp.), Exp. 33, Instrucción contra Fidel Conde y otros por el delito de lesiones y otros en agravio de la Comunidad de Chuschi (14 May 1960).

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quispillacctinos faced off against eighty chuschinos. Participants from both villages

flung rocks at each other from their huaracas (slings), wounding at least three chuschinos

and an undetermined number of quispillacctinos. The battle raged on for several hours before the quispillacctinos finally retired to their side of the disputed territory. Two days later the raiders returned, this time targeting Cconchalla, where they and their cattle feasted on their neighbors’ potato crops.29 When all was said and done, several villagers on both sides of the conflict reported injuries, and no less than thirty-three chuschinos

reported “an infinity of stolen animals.”30

The chuschinos were not to be outdone. As quispillacctino elders Luis Núñez

Ccallocunto and Martín Vega Tomaylla later dictated in a statement to a state scribe, it

was during these weeks that chuschino authorities were rumored to have gone into

Quispillaccta to purchase multiple cases of bullets suitable for a .22 caliber handgun. Did

they intend to shoot quispillacctinos with their own bullets? The answer to this question

would come the following month, as chuschinos embarked on what the old men called a

“march of death” into Quispillaccta territory.31

Before discussing this “march of death,” I would like to highlight two themes that

emerge from the above discussion. The first involves the role of gender in inter-village

disputes. Florencia Mallon discusses the paternalistic logic behind Andean peasant

mobilizations. She writes, “[T]he defense of women, and especially of virgins, emerged

29Ibid.

30ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1960, 25 exp.), Exp. 40, Instrucción contra Fidel Conde y otros por el delito de lesiones, incendio, y robo (26 April 1960).

31ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega en la instructión contra Ernesto Jaime y otros (3 June 1960).

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as the culminating motive for confrontation. The virgins are the gendered symbol of

unity, among ethnically and spatially defined factions, the discursive marker that

designates a moral frontier beyond which resistance was inevitable.”32 If we compare this description to quispillacctinos’ charge that the chuschinos had “violated” their

women, then we get a better sense of what was in play for the villagers. If the

quispillaccinos’ charges were substantiated, then they would have had in their view a sort

of paternalistic obligation to respond with force. Even if the accusation was fabricated, it

served as a moral justification for the quispillacctinos to mobilize against their neighbors.

And even though this was the only case in which I found an explicit mention of

the rape of indigenous peasant women, stories, however vague in detail, about the

defense of women against aggressions from the other side of the river remained strong in

villagers’ collective memory during my visit to the district in 2007. One such account

involved a quispillacctino teenager who snuck into the home of his chuschina girlfriend

while her parents were sleeping for a midnight sexual encounter sometime around 1968.

In those days, we are told, unmarried campesinas slept in their parents’ kitchens, near the

center of the house, where they were believed to be best protected against such

trespasses. It so happens that the young woman’s father came calling on her in the midst of her carnal rendezvous: “Hija!” When the young man heard this, he did as most teenagers would do and dashed out of the home. The quispillacctino youngster is said to have stumbled and fallen while running across the family lot, a grave error indeed, for the

32 Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 194.

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father then caught up to the young man and hit him over the head with a stone or a stick, killing him instantly. The story ends with the father turning himself in to local police.33

I found no archival record of this account. Yet regardless of whether or not it actually took place, the fact that the incident remained in chuschinos’ collective consciousness in 2007 bespeaks of their paternalistic values. The chuschino father appears as the story’s hero, a man who took the necessary steps to safeguard his daughter’s virtue by lodging her in the kitchen and coming in to check on her in the middle of the night. He further cemented his patriarchal authority by killing the quispillacctino who had deflowered his daughter. Finally, his willingness to turn himself in and face the legal consequences of his actions demonstrates that, but for this

“understandable” act of aggression, he was an upstanding and law-abiding comunero.

This individualized episode may have served as a rhetorical reminder to chuschino men of their collective responsibility to defend indigenous women’s virtue.

This also helps explain the symbolic significance of stealing Chuschi’s virgin patron-saint. In doing so, quispillacctinos were exposing in a symbolic way chuschinos’ paternalistic incompetence. If chuschinos’ could not keep their rivals’ hands off their most sacred virgin, then what did this bespeak of their communal integrity?

Of course, the events surrounding the stealing of the patron-saint tell us as much about villagers’ religious sensibilities as they do about gender, which brings us to our second theme. Van Young argues that religious iconography served as important physical symbols of community solidarity and autonomy for indigenous peasants in

33 Field notes, Chuschi (26 July 2007).

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eighteenth-century Mexico, showing that any physical tampering with effigies such as patron-saints could serve trigger collective mobilization and violence.34 This seems to

have been in play in the Chuschi case, as indigenous campesinos attempted to validate

their own claims to territorial autonomy by erecting chapels equipped with patron-saints.

It follows that the destruction or theft of the rival village’s religious iconography served

as a public subversion of that village’s symbolic solidarity. Durkheim’s discussion of the

sacredness of collective totems also comes to mind here. According to Durkheim, the

sacredness of the totem stems from the fact that it is “a material representation of the

clan.”35 In other words, the patron-saint not only represented the solidarity of the

community, but it also signified the community itself. In capturing the patron-saint

“totem” and burning the chapel to the ground, the quispillacctinos were symbolically

conquering the neighboring village, rendering its “sacred” symbols of religious power

“profane.” Such a culturally offensive action had the potential of escalating inter-village

hostilities and provoking violent reactions from the chuschinos, reactions such as the

“march of death” that followed.

34 See Eric Van Young, “Conflict and Solidarity in Indian Village Life: The Guadalajara Region in the Late Colonial Period,” Hispanic American Historical Review 64 (February, 1984); Van Young, The Other Rebellion, 412.

35 Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Karen E. Fields (New York:The Free Press, 1995 [1912]), 124.

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The River Runs Red

The march took place on 5-6 May, 1960.36 According to elders Núñez and Vega, it began when eighty foot-soldiers and 100 horsemen from Chuschi breached the imaginary border. The mob, comprised of both men and women, appeared poised to

“sweep the entire Community [sic].” They had their sights on the Cceullahuaycco estancia (ranch), the site of the local chapel and cofradía houses. After completing what the quispillacctino elders called “a total destruction” of the chapel, they took twenty goats and several religious ornaments owned by the cofradía. They also looted the homes of

Guillermo Galindo and Isaac Rivas, stealing everything from garments to tools.37 The raiders even took with them a quispillacctino hostage, sixty-eight-year-old farmer

Asunción Ccallocunto Núñez. After taking random household items and upwards of 440 soles in cash from his home, the chuschinos denounced Ccallocunto as a ladrón (thief) and led him to the punas of Arapa, where they tied him to a large rock and assailed him with punches, kicks, and lashes with whips and cocobolo (an Andean whip with a firm, knotted tip). They then dragged the badly beaten elder back to Chuschi and locked him

36This episode described here is found in a multi-volume criminal proceeding of the Superior Court of Ayacucho, located in the Regional Archive of Ayacucho. The case, Expediente 687, “Instructiva contra Ernesto Jaime y otros,” consists of at least eleven volumes, seven of which I have been able to recover. Six of the seven volumes can be found in unnumbered Legajos of the Corte Superior de Justicia-Penal, Cangallo (hereafter referred to as ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687). These are: Sin Leg. (1967- 1968, 6 exp.); Sin Leg. (1963, 18 exp.); Sin Leg. (1960, 11 exp.: 2 tomos); Sin Leg. (1963, 11 exp.); Sin Leg. (1964, 16 exp.). The seventh volume is found in Corte Superior de Justicia-Penal, Víctor Fajardo (hereafter referred to as ARA, CSJ-JP Víctor Fajardo., Sin Leg. Exp. 687). I thank Freddy Taboada for helping me locate this misplaced volume.

37 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

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in the jailhouse for three days without food before finally releasing him to the

Quispillaccta attorney.38

The following morning, Núñez and Vega were helping their fellow quispillacctinos comb the area to assess the damages when they learned that their adversaries had “continued with this disastrous and criminal task” by invading

Quimsacruz, one of the zones on the Chuschi-Quispillaccta border.39 As Fiscal Hinojosa

later confirmed, as many as 500 quispillacctino men, women, children, and elders hurried

to the site, armed with sticks, stones, and slings.40 Two of those elders were Núñez and

Vega, who according to their testimony, went along “to see just what the Chuschinos

were up to.”41 Others, such as twenty-eight-year-old peasant Daniel Núñez, testified to having gone with the sole purpose of rescuing the kidnapped Ccallocunto.42 When the search party arrived at Quimsacruz, they saw that upwards of 300 chuschinos had been

waiting for them, taking cover behind large boulders atop the nearby hills.43 Chuschino men and women waited for their adversaries with clubs; at least a dozen had their

38 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Asunción Ccalloccunto Núñez (24 June 1960); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Ampliación preventiva de Asunción Ccallocunto Núñez (13 August 1963). The statement about Ccallocunto’s captors calling him a “ladrón” appears in the eyewitness testimony of quispillacctino Justiniano Mendoza. See CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Justiniano Mendoza Conde (11 June 1960).

39 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

40 ARA, CSJ-JP Víctor Fajardo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Acusación Fiscal (14 September 1966).

41 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

42 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Declaración de Daniel Núñez Huamaní (22 March 1961).

43 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. 687, Declaración de Daniel Núñez Huamaní (22 March 1961).

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huaracas poised for an attack. Suddenly, Núñez and Vega reported, a swarm of

chuschinos “came running down, assailing us with hondazos [sling shots] and

cocobolos.” Before the quispillacctinos could shake themselves loose, the loud cracks of

Winchester rifles pierced the air. Núñez and Vega recalled that they and their

compoblanos had no choice but to drop to the ground amidst this “painful surprise.”44

Martín Mendieta, a comunero in his mid-twenties, was the first to get shot, dropping right where he stood. His wife, Cristina Huamaní Ccallocunto, had been holding down the rear of the quispillacctino defense. When someone informed her of what had happened to her husband, she pushed her way through to the front line, only to find Martín lying dead, his blue jacket and striped green shirt stained in his own blood.45

More shooting ensued. One of the bullets struck nineteen-year-old Justiniano

Mendoza Conde in the right rib, a projectile that would still be there when he reported the

incident to the presiding judge more than a month later.46 Another bullet, fired from behind a stack of ichu (a thatch grown in the Andes) just five meters away, pierced thirty- five-year-old Pascual Conde Huamán in the left shin, leaving him hospitalized for two weeks.47 Ricardo Conde, Marcelino Galindo, José Matías Galindo, Narciso Mejía,

Constantino Mendoza, Mauro Moreno, Emilio Núñez, Francisco Núñez, and Julián Vilca

44 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

45 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Cristina Huamaní Ccallocunto (6 July 1960). The description of the victim’s physical state at the time of death appears in the medical autopsy. See ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Diligencia de autopsia del cadáver de Martín Mendieta (1 March 1961).

46 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Justiniano Mendoza Conde (11 June 1960).

47 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Declaración de Pascual Conde Huamán (13 June 1960).

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also took hits.48 Ancianos (elders) Núñez and Vega recapped the remainder of the assault. With bullets, stones, and pebbles whizzing past them, they and the remaining quispillacctinos scurried into retreat, forced to leave behind their fallen compatriots.

Finally, the shooting ceased. But just when the besieged quispillacctinos thought it was

safe to emerge from their cover behind the rocks, a swarm of chuschino horsemen and

foot soldiers stormed their targets with slings and cocobolos to add “a dramatic epilogue

to our situation.” Fortunately, the two oldsters managed to escape with only minor

injuries.49

In the final analysis, the attack left three quispillacctinos dead and dozens

wounded; the court’s prosecutors estimated the worth of damaged and stolen possessions

at over 18,500 soles.50 After the assault, the chuschinos left their neighbors to lick their

wounds. Pascuala Huamaní de Mejía testified that she had remained in her Quispillaccta

home during the attack. Earlier that day, her husband, Sebastián Mendieta Tucno, joined

the search party for Asunción Ccallocunto. When she learned of the attack at

Quimsacruz, she feared that Sebastián may have been one of the unfortunate quispillacctino victims. Pascuala hurried over to the battlefield, worried that her worst

fears had come to pass. When she got there, she saw her husband lying on the ground.

He was still alive, but his red cotton shirt had been tarnished by the even deeper red of his

own blood. He had been shot, and was in desperate need of medical attention. Just then,

another figure caught her eye. It was that of her dead brother-in-law, Martín Mendieta.

48 ARA, CSJ-JP Víctor Fajardo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Acusación Fiscal (14 September 1966).

49 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

50 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Informe de los peritos (26 July 1963).

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Four days later, the bullet that had felled her husband would claim his life as well.51

Unlike Pascuala, Marcela Mejía Huamaní had not heard anything regarding the status of her husband, a middle-aged indígena named Antonio Galindo Espinoza. It was not until nightfall that she finally saw her injured husband being carried off on a stretcher, covered by a poncho. Even though he had a severe gunshot wound, he managed to tell his wife the name of his assailant before being rushed off to the hospital in Ayacucho City, where he died days later.52

The man he identified was qala authority Ernesto Jaime. After the incident, the quispillacctinos brought criminal charges against Jaime, Felipe Aycha, and other Chuschi authorities, alleging that they had spearheaded the assault. Jaime fervently denied these allegations, testifying that he “at no time instigated the fight between the two communities; nor did he see that any of his [community] members had any type of firearms. …[H]e didn’t participate in the crime[s] of assault or abigeato, much less participate in the fight that left several wounded or killed[.]”53 Naturally, as Mayor, he

had been made aware of the events of 5-6 May. He had determined that “it was up to the

Police to bring order to those disturbances,” however, choosing not to take action until

they arrived at the scene. When it appeared that these authorities would not arrive in time

to settle the issue, Jaime took a horse to nearby Manzanayocc, where he awaited

51 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Pascuala Huamaní Mejía (6 July 1960). The description of the victim’s physical state and death appears in the medical autopsy report. See ARA, CSJ- JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Diligencia de autopsia del cadáver de Sebastián Mendieta (1 March 1961).

52 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Marcela Mejía Huamaní (11 July 1960); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Diligencia de autopsia del cadáver de Antonio Galindo Espinoza (1 March 1961).

53 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Instructiva del Inculpado Ernesto Jaime Miranda (27 March 1963).

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transportation to Ayacucho City so that he could alert departmental authorities. The

transportation never arrived, Jaime claimed, so he decided to wait there until much of the

fighting had abated. Aycha also denied his involvement in the attack, claiming to have

been out of town at the time.54

These were convenient alibis that quispillacctino witnesses would not easily

corroborate. Seniors Núñez and Vega had seen Chuschi’s Mayor at the battlefield,

disguised in “comunero clothing and a black hat.” According to their deposition, when

Jaime ran out of bullets in his carbine rifle, he pulled out a small revolver and fired it on

the quispillacctino crowd.55 Aycha’s accusers denounced him with equal fervor. At a

court hearing on 13 August 1963, quispillacctino Leonardo Conde stood before the

accused Aycha and testified to having watched from eighty meters away as he

dismounted his “golden horse” to embrace the gunman who felled Martín Mendieta.56

Two other witnesses, Daniel and Bernabé Núñez, also appeared in court that day to accuse Aycha of riding around on his golden horse during Quimsacruz battle; Daniel even saw him shoot Marcelino Tomaylla and Justiniano Mendoza.57 And according to

elders Núñez and Vega, rumors had been circulating in the district even before the assault

54 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Instructiva del Inculpado Ernesto Jaime Miranda (27 March 1963); Confrontación del testigo Leonardo Conde Machaca y del inculpado Felipe Aycha [pseud.] (13 August 1963).

55 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega (3 June 1960).

56 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 687, Confrontación del testigo Leonardo Conde Machaca y del inculpado Felipe Aycha (13 August 1963).

57 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Confrontación del testigo Daniel Núñez Huamaní y del inculpado Felipe Aycha (13 August 1963); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 687, Confrontación del testigo Bernabé Fernando Núñez Conde y del inculpado Felipe Aycha (13 August 1963).

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that Jaime, Aycha, and other chuschino authorities had been holding secret meetings to plot the attack. The quispillacctino elders were convinced that these men enjoyed

“absolute dominion and control over Chuschi’s indigenous mass,” which made it easy for them to get comuneros to join their cause. When sheer persuasion did not work, they said, Jaime and Aycha obliged their constituents “under threat of a fine, and punishment as a traitor.”58

None of the quispillacctino plaintiffs suggested that the reverse may have been

the case, that is, that it was the comuneros who demanded that their political authorities

lead them into battle against their neighbors. However, when we consider our discussion

from the previous chapter about indigenous villagers’ cultural expectations for mestizo authorities, we are inclined to consider this possibility. As I argued there, indigenous chuschinos expected their qala leaders to defend and protect them materially, politically, and if need be, militarily. Jaime’s military leadership during the pitched battles against the quispillacctinos convinced many comuneros that he possessed this paternalistic quality and it cemented popular opinion about his legitimacy as a non-indigenous authority. Indeed, chuschinos would remember Jaime’s role in the communal defense for years to come. Profe Ignacio Huaycha did not need for me to bring up the battle to start talking about Jaime’s role in it: “He led the chuschino cavalry,” he said fondly. When I

asked profe Ignacio if Jaime had enjoyed the comuneros’ support, he nodded, “That’s

why he did it. Because we needed his military expertise. Because you can’t just cede

58 ARA, CSJ-Pen. Cangallo, Sin Leg. Exp. 687, Preventiva de Luis Núñez Ccallocunto y Martín Vega en la instructión contra Ernesto Jaime y otros (3 June 1960).

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your [communal] lands to other people.”59 Village council records from the period

buttress profe Ignacio’s assertion. Early on 16 April 1960, community members gathered in the Casa Consistorial, where by unanimous decision they elected Jaime, Aycha, and several other qala authorities to top administrative positions. The results of the ad-hoc election were met with applause and “lively voice[s] of satisfaction,” for they signaled that the “the integrity of our town” had been placed in good hands. Over 100 heads of household signed or made their mark on the corresponding minutes.60 Later that

afternoon, Chuschi residents held yet another assembly, this time to discuss “the defense

of territorial integrity.” According to the official transcript, “the whole community

spontaneously offered to cooperate in creating funds [to support litigation], in accordance

with the state of each comunero’s means.” In addition to this economic assistance,

comuneros pledged to defend their village’s lands “materially or personally until the end

of the litigation,” adding, “[T]his is about the integrity of our territory, as proven by the

title that we’ve kept since [the time of] our ancestors.” 132 heads of household signed or

made their mark on the pledge sheet.61 While we cannot rule out the possibility of

coercion, these records imply that indigenous comuneros expected their mestizo authorities to lead in the communal defense effort, even if it meant putting aside their differences for the time being. Jaime’s willingness and competence in leading in this effort cemented his political legitimacy. The same may also have been the case for

59 Interview with Ignacio Huaychao, Chuschi (27 July 2007).

60 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 687, Acta de la Comunidad de Chuschi para la defensa de la integridad territorial (16 April 1960).

61 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 687, Acta de Renovación de Casos de la Comunidad de Chuschi (16 April 1960).

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Felipe Aycha. However, unlike Jaime, Aycha still had his reputation as an abusive

political authority and abigeo “boss” to contend with. In the following chapter, we will

see if Aycha’s paternalistic military leadership during the inter-community conflict was enough to override the popular view that he was an illegitimate power holder.

What is certain is that the quispillacctinos would not soon forget the tragic events

of 5-6 May 1960. The following year, Quispillaccta counsel Núñez Pacotaipe invoked

the episode in a letter to the departmental Prefect denouncing a recent attempt by

chuschinos to graze livestock in Quispillaccta territory. Núñez denounced “the reiterated abuses that have been victimizing my client[s] for some time now,” adding, “[T]he

Community of Chuschi…is always trying to appropriate the lands of others[.]” Núñez

hoped that the Prefect would take appropriate measures in order to “avoid tragic events

such as those committed by the Community of Chuschi on 6 May 1960[.]”62

Nor would the quispillacctinos forget the people whom they held responsible for

the massacre—people like indigenous peasants Miguel Pacotaipe and Dámaso Allcca.

Even though their accusers never brought enough evidence against them to bring about a

conviction in the Peruvian courts,63 quispillacctinos remembered the two chuschinos for

their role in the assault. For instance, some believed that Pacotaipe fired upon their

compoblanos during that infamous 6 May battle; others held him personally responsible

62 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 180, Exp. 61, Solicitud de garantías presentada por Gregorio Núñez Pacotaipe al Prefecto (12 December 1961).

63 Pacotaipe and Allcca’s names appeared on the list of suspects for the 5-6 May 1960 attacks. See ARA, CSJ-JP Víctor Fajardo, Sin Leg., Exp. 68, Acusación Fiscal (14 September 1966).

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for the kidnapping of Asunción Ccallocunto one day prior.64 While we cannot know for

sure whether Pacotaipe was involved in these attacks, we do know that he was one of the

chuschinos whose Suyuccacca dwelling was allegedly destroyed by the quispillacctinos

on 5 April 1960. This may have motivated him to participate in the counter-offensive the

following month.

Guilty or not, Miguel Pacotaipe and Dámaso Allcca were still free men in 1962.

So when cattle merchants Ignacio and Juan Pomahuallcca offered them employment in

the form of herding six heads of cattle to Ayacucho City’s San Juan Bautista fair on the

morning of 15 March, the campesinos could oblige. By the time they rounded up the cattle for the trip, it was already around three in the afternoon. The tradesmen and their indigenous peones took a brief detour, on horseback and with cattle in tow, toward the liquor store owned by Teodoro Mejía in Quispillaccta. Perhaps they had gone for a quick drink before their long journey. Whatever the reason for their sojourn, it proved to be a fatal one, for Miguel Pacotaipe would not leave Quispillaccta alive.65

Several quispillacctinos had been drinking aguardiente at Mejía’s liquor store

when the cattlemen rode by that afternoon. According to Allcca’s police deposition,

roughly twenty of Mejía’s patrons immediately filed out of the store to confront the

chuschinos. Varayoq Manuel “Ccoriñahui” (“Golden Eyes”) Núñez Conde, by his own

64 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1962, 9 expedientes), Exp. 187 (5 tomos), Acusación Fiscal de la instrucción contra Manuel Núñez y otros (26 October 1963).

65 This episode is chronicled in a criminal proceeding of the Superior Court of Ayacucho, located in the Archivo Regional de Ayacucho. See ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1962, 9 expedientes), Exp. 187, “Instrucción contra Manuel Núñez y otros por el delito de homicidio y lesiones” (5 tomos ) (hereafter referred to as ARA-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187). The above description is taken from: Manifestación de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962).

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admission well intoxicated, was the most vocal of the quispillacctinos, accusing the chuschinos of herding cattle that belonged to him.66 He also claimed to have been given

orders to capture the peones for their role in the murder of their compoblanos two years

prior. When the quispillacctinos closed in on the chuschinos, Pacotaipe made haste on

horseback toward the nearby hills of Chicllaraso.67

Lieutenant Governor Teófilo Machaca had just stopped by Mejía’s store to

purchase some coca leaves when he overheard the commotion outside and shouts about

an escaping thief. When he got to the front door, Ignacio Pomahuallcca explained to him

that the cattle in question belonged to him, and that he had employed the chuschinos to

steer them to Ayacucho. Upon hearing this, the Lieutenant Governor ordered his

constituents not to harm the chuschinos; he would detain the merchants until he could

verify their story.68 But, as Allcca recalled, the varayoq refused to back down. He immediately began calling on his fellow comuneros to catch the “cattle rustlers” anyway.

Before long, a band of mounted quispillacctinos went galloping after Pacotaipe.69

A second group of villagers closed in on Allcca, who also managed to escape on horseback. He did not make it far before his pursuers caught up to him. Quispillacctino

Sabino Ccallocunto was on his way home from a long day of work in his chacra when he

66 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Solicitud de libertad provisional de Manuel Núñez (4 May 1962).

67 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Testimonial de Seferino Juan Pomahualcca Maldonado ante el Primer Juzgado de Instrucción (2 April 1962); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Informe del Juez Instructor (19 August 1963); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962).

68 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Teófilo Machaca Conde (18 March 1962).

69 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962).

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overheard some of his fellow villagers shouting “get that thief!” Ccallocunto hurried

over to find out what all the clamor was about when he saw that his compoblanos had

already snagged Allcca and were submitting him to a series of blows. By his own

admission, Ccallocunto could not resist giving the defenseless chuschino “just one punch

in the head” before returning home.70

Meanwhile, other quispillacctinos were in full pursuit of Miguel Pacotaipe.

Allcca and his attorney Agripino Aronés informed the judge of what happened next based

on the accounts they received from witnesses in neighboring Chacolla. According to

these witnesses, they said, Pacotaipe drove his horse straight into the Chicllarazo River in

a desperate attempt to elude his pursuers. Apparently, the current was stronger than he

had calculated, carrying the horse and rider downstream for the distance of about half a

village block before Pacotaipe finally broke with the animal and swam to the opposite

bank, into Chacolla territory. But this did not deter his aggressors, who rode their horses

into the water after him.71 Quispillacctino Dionisio Núñez testified that he and his

compoblanos chased Pacotaipe to the water’s edge amidst shouts of “the thief is getting

away!” After crossing the bridge into Chacolla, they found the chuschino hiding behind

a stack of quinua (a native plant) inside a corral at the point called Patahuasi. Dionisio

and two of his compoblanos, Valentín Núñez and Francisco Espinosa, grabbed Pacotaipe

and began what proved to be a fruitless interrogation. Pacotaipe was either too rattled, too stubborn, or too terrified to comply, for he answered their queries with incoherent

70 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Sabino Ccallocunto Galindo ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962).

71 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Ampliación de la denuncia de Agripino Aronés, Dámaso Allcca, y Juana Quispe vda. De Pacotaipe (22 March 1962).

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statements such as: “I don’t know;” “Who knows what my name is;” and “I don’t know

where I am.” His noncompliance apparently struck a nerve with his interrogators, who

began kicking and punching him all over the head, face, and body. The quispillacctinos

then dragged Pacotaipe by his own poncho out to the bridge, where the other vigilantes

greeted him with more punches and kicks. The three captors requested a rope to restrain and haul their captive, but the mob could only produce a small rope no longer than one meter in length. They tied the short rope together with fabric from their own belts and fastened it around Pacotaipe’s waist. After they crossed the bridge, another group of quispillacctinos—plenty drunk, by Dionisio’s account—caught up with them and began to “barbarously mistreat” Pacotaipe even more.72

Then came the war of words. According to the testimony of Víctor Conde, it was

around this time when Luciano Galindo rode in on his horse and called Pacotaipe a

“ladrón.” Perhaps this was all Pacotaipe needed to become responsive again, for

according to one witness it was at this point that he fired back at his accusers, calling

them “occes” (literally, “darkies”) and assured them that “later they would see because he

was remembering each and every one of them.” Even Fiscal Hinojosa agreed in his

statement that Pacotaipe’s words seemed to have “mortally offended his opponents.”73

This may explain why Pacotaipe wound up on the bottom of the ravine Glorietapunco—a straight drop of about ten meters. Some men present, such as Dionisio Núñez, admitted

72 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Instructiva de Dionisio Núñez Ccallocunto (24 March 1962).

73 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Instructiva de Víctor Conde (fs. 206); Acusación Fiscal (26 October 1963).

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that Pacotaipe’s captors knocked him down into the gorge.74 Quispillacctino Nicacio

Machaca, who happened to be traveling from Jampatuyocc to Glorietapunco at the time, remembered things a bit differently. He had just sat down to chew on some coca leaves when he noticed that over thirty of his compoblanos were escorting Pacotaipe across the gorge. Nicacio watched from a distance of about a block away as Pacotaipe caught his captors unawares and threw himself into the gorge down below in a desperate attempt to escape.75 Whatever the case, the fall left him gravely injured. Nicasio watched as his

compoblanos went in after Pacotaipe, forced him to his feet, and made him walk into town. The injured chuschino only made it about three blocks before collapsing, Nicacio

said. Upon seeing this, Valentín Núñez retied the rope around Pacotaipe’s neck and

hauled him by the throat another eighty meters. When it appeared that the captive was

losing consciousness, they carried him in his own poncho the rest of the way.76

It was now nightfall. Allcca, who had remained prisoner in Quispillaccta the

whole time, was brought out to watch as his foes dragged Pacotaipe’s limp body into

view. The quispillacctinos ordered Allcca to carry his compoblano away from the scene.

Suffering, no doubt, from mental and physical exhaustion, Allcca could only muster up

enough strength to carry Pacotaipe about one block before having to set him back down

and rest. Pacotaipe lay there dying. He requested some water and then perished by his

74 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Instructiva de Dionisio Núñez Ccallocunto (24 March 1962).

75 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Nicasio Machaca Vilca (26 March 1962).

76 Ibid.

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compoblano’s side.77 Ironically, after all he had been through that day, Miguel Pacotaipe

had never gotten the drink that apparently brought him to Quispillaccta in the first place.

The quispillacctinos decided to hold both Allcca and the corpse in the nearby house of

Ramón Galindo until daylight. That night, Allcca suffered more abuse at the hands of his

quispillacctino captors, who at one point went as far as to brandish a whip in his face,

wounding his left eye. The following morning, Allcca and his captors took Pacotaipe’s

body to Ayacucho City, depositing it at the local cemetery.78

Pacotaipe’s death marked the culmination of inter-community violence in pre- insurgency Chuschi. Through the bloodshed, we can grasp some of the racial and gendered undertones of the conflict. With respect to gender, we see that even during the pitched battles, women were either left at home or relegated to the rear, which supports our earlier observation about the paternalistic logic behind the violence. Still, the fact that women participated in the battles at all demonstrates that it was not simply a man’s issue. On the contrary, women shared the overarching communitarian identity vis-à-vis

the local “others.” To wit, indigenous peasant women have carved out a spot for

themselves in collective memory about the years of conflict. Vicente Blanco, the mestizo

authority and schoolteacher remembered for his clashes with Billie Jean Isbell, told

Alberto, Julián, and me about the active role that campesinas’ played in the conflict

during the period: “The mujercitas [little ladies] from Quispillaccta would bathe in the

77 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962).

78 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 187, Manifestación de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil (17 March 1962); ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg. (1962, 9 expedientes), Exp. 187, Preventiva ampliatoria de Dámaso Allcca Chuchón (27 March 1962).

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[Chuschi] River and yell at the women from Chuschi, les mentaban la madre [they’d

curse them out]: ‘Ladronas!’ ‘Rateras!’ [‘Thieves!’ ‘Burglers!’] and what have you. In response, the chuschinos would yell back: ‘Occes!’79

This last point merits some discussion, for it brings us to the issue of race and ethnicity. I was researching in the Regional Archive of Ayacucho in July 2007 when I

got an urgent call from Julián. He said that he checked on seating for the Chuschi combi

(shuttle), which we were supposed to take the next morning, and that since fiestas patrias

(Independence Day celebrations) were around the corner, the seats were filling up fast;

we needed to get our tickets right then and there. I dropped everything and caught a cab

to pick up Julián at his CEISA (Center for Social Research of Ayacucho) office. When we got there the “station”—a small garage big enough to fit one van—was packed with

passengers since a shuttle was leaving for Chuschi right then. As we were waiting in line

to purchase our tickets, Julián nudged me and nodded toward the lone graffiti on the wall:

“Ojecuna.” It took me a moment or two to register that the writing on the wall was a

Spanglicization of the Quechua word “Occekuna,” meaning “darkies.” As I had previously shared with Julián, “occe” was the word that kept coming up in the written historical record whenever the chuschinos wanted to insult the quispillacctinos. The word has a double-entendre. The salt that is native to Quispillaccta is known for its unusually murky shade. But as many a chuschino would tell us with a wry smile, the

quispillacctinos were simply more dark-skinned than they, an observation that my own

79 Personal correspondence with Vicente Blanco [pseud.], Chuschi (26 July 2007).

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eyes could never quite confirm. For the chuschinos, then, the quispillacctinos were a

people as darkly-complected as the salt that crystallized in their own mountains.80

Where did this racialized conception of the local “other” come from? According

to anthropologist Tom Zuidema, the zone was originally settled before the Spanish

conquest. These settlers came from two distinct ethnic groups, the Aymaraes (Aymaras)

and the Canas. The Aymaraes settled on the side of the stream that corresponds to

modern-day Chuschi, the Canas in Quispillaccta.81 Isbell takes this line of argumentation one step further, arguing that the chuschinos actually made up a group of Incan mitimaes,

while the quispillacctinos came from a distinct ethnic group in the Canas.82 While this explanation has since been contested,83 its importance may lie more in the perception of ethnic “superiority” held by indigenous chuschinos. At the same time, quispillacctinos’

took pride in their history of supposed opposition to Inca hegemony. Ethnographer

Gavin Smith has shown how peasants in the highland community of Huasicancha (Junín

Department) remembered themselves as having allied with Spanish conquerors to combat

Inca imperialism, creating a political consciousness of resistance that remained with them

well into the twentieth century.84 A similar situation developed in Quispillaccta, and although quispillacctinos could produce little historical evidence, their claim to a distinct

80 Field notes, Ayacucho City (26 July 2007).

81 R. Tom Zuidema, “Algunos problemas etnohistóricos del Departamento de Ayacucho,” Wamani, 1, no. 1 (Ayacucho: Colegio de Antropólogos de Ayacucho, 1966): 68-75.

82 Isbell, “Andean Structures,” 41-2.

83 Earls and Silverblat, “Ayllus y etnías,” 267-282.

84 Gavin Smith, Livelihood and Resistance: Peasants and the Politics of Land in Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).

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and resistant pre-Colombian heritage continued to fuel their political consciousness in the twentieth century.

These identity politics were certainly expressed in the inter-village conflict described above. The battered Miguel Pacotaipe managed to sting his quispillacctino

aggressors with the racial slur “occe”—an offense that left him lying on the bottom of a ditch. Even chuschina women resorted to this racial slur during verbal bouts with their

quispillacctina neighbors. This is significant in that it underscores the extent to which

Quechua-speaking highlanders created their own racial and ethnic categories that went

beyond conventional mestizo-indígena dichotomies. On one level, chuschinos’ claim to a

distant Incan past gave them a sense of ethnic entitlement over their supposed Aymara

neighbors. On another level, chuschino men and women combined phenotypical and

geological markers to assert their racial superiority over the indigenous population that

inhabited the other side of the river.

Crimson Wakes: Memory and Conflict after Bloodshed

With mortalities and injuries on both sides of the Chuschi River, and with

members from each community facing serious criminal charges, the inter-village violence

dissipated in the years following the bloodshed of 1960-1962. The conflict did not go

away, however. On 6 May 1963, Quispillaccta counsel Gregorio Núñez Pacotaipe

penned a letter to the President of the Correctional Tribunal, charging that Chuschi

comuneros had “reinitiated diverse acts of terrorism” against his constituents. On 4

April, he alleged, the chuschinos had set fire to the cofradía house at Cceullahuaycco.

This was the second time they had done this, Núñez reminded the President, once again

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evoking the “march of death.” Moreover, as if to add insult to injury, chuschino Mariano

Cayllahua, whom Núñez suspected was behind the arson, had also been riling up his

compoblanos “with the sure purpose of provoking more bloody acts;” this at a time when

the two communities “had been maintaining a state of calm and peace[.]”85 In November

of that same year, indígenas Nicolás and Nestor Machaca of Quispillaccta issued a letter

to the provincial Subprefect claiming that chuschino León Tucno had illicitly sold

another chuschino the cornfields of Locrocca, which had belonged to them “since [the age of] our Grandparents.” Worse still, the chuschino buyer had already begun

harvesting corn in the disputed territory. State authorities sided with the quispillacctinos this time, denouncing the transaction as an “abusive…violation of the patrimonial interests of the plaintiffs.”86

Conflict between the two communities surfaced again in the following decade.

This time, it was the chuschinos who cried foul. According to communal leaders, the

quispillacctinos breached the temporary peace on 24 April 1971, when a band of eighty

comuneros invaded the chuschino holdings of Lorieta and Chicllapampa, an area of about

eight hectares. Chuschino authorities reminded officials that this was not the first time

their counterparts had literally stepped over the line, claiming, “This usurper of a

Community Quispillaccta, for years has committed with impunity Criminal acts against

the patrimonial rights of our Community[.]”87 The problem, it seems, stemmed from the

85 ARA, CSJ-JP Cangallo, Sin Leg., Exp. 687, Solicitud presentada por el personero legal de Quispillaccta al Presidente del Tribunal Correccional (May 6, 1963).

86 ARA, SC, Caja 40, Of. Chuschi 1963. (4 November 1963).

87 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Solicitud de Santos Mejía Achallma y Valerio Chiclla Calderón al Inginiero Jefe de Sub Zona Agraria (26 April 1971).

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fact that both communities shared legal title over the pastoral lands. This became evident

in a June 1971 police report filed by the Commander of the provincial Guardia Civil

regarding a recent conflict between the rival villages. According to the report, a group of comuneros from Quispillaccta set out to harvest the oat fields of Lorieta on April 21, only to find that a much smaller group of chuschinos had already arrived with the same

purpose. Sensing that they were heavily outnumbered, the chuschinos had little choice

but to turn around and go home.88 The report did not indicate how the case was resolved,

but apparently it was still underway as of July of the following year, prompting Chuschi

President Félix Retamozo to request permission for his community to collect the crops

that they had planted there during the previous year. Cangallo Subprefect Octavio

Cabrera Rocha denied the request, explaining, “Regarding the terrain called LORITA

[sic] both communities are still under litigation…therefore the guarantees solicited [by

Retamozo] do not apply.”89 Two weeks after the Lorieta incident, President Retamozo

reported that the quispillacctinos had once again invaded the frontier lands at Lachocc.90

The office of the National System of Social Organization (SINAMOS) agreed to arbitrate a conference between communal authorities in Ayacucho City on 21 June 1972.

Various members of Quispillaccta showed up to present their case against the President of Chuschi. The chuschino leader, however, never came to the meeting, electing instead to take his case before the Cangallo Subprefect. This outraged the quispillacctinos, who

88 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Informe del Comandante de Puesto de la Guardia Civil al Subprefecto de Cangallo (8 June 1971).

89 ARA, SC, Caja 36, Oficios de la Superioridad (Of. Sup.) 1972, Informe del Subprefecto Octavio Cabrera Rocha al Prefecto del Departamento de Ayacucho (19 July 1972).

90 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Denuncia de Félix Retamozo Núñez al Subprefecto de Cangallo (7 May 1971).

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interpreted the move as a sneaky provocation. In a letter issued to the Chief of Peasant

Communities, Quispillaccta President Salomón Galindo denounced this as more of the

same from his chuschino counterpart: “[T]his Señor is practically provoking the whole

pueblo with his denunciations, falsely denouncing us for robbing Cereals in the sector

“Lorita” [sic] [even though] not one comunero from Chuschi has cultivated that site,

[while] the comuneros from Quispillaccta have cultivated [it since] last year. …[T]rough

complaints and lawsuits these Señores provoke [the disruption] of the peace between the two Communities as in the year 1960[.]”91 In a subsequent letter, Quispillaccta

authorities complained that on 26 July their adversaries had invaded their holdings at

Yanaccocha, Huancarumi, and Acco, stealing eleven goats in the process.92

On 14 April 1975, Quispillaccta authorities penned a letter to the Director of the

ORAMS (a regional office of SINAMOS) of Ayacucho, charging that their chuschino counterparts were at it again:

[Chuschi authorities] are precisely those who have convoked a general assembly of Comuneros…in which they agreed to recover the terrains that they claim to own; and to realize these recuperations in the form of a clandestine invasion, in the deferent [sic] zones of their colindancia and especially in various sites [in which they have] border conflicts with the Community of Quispillaccta, the reason for which in the year 5 to 6 May of 1960 [sic] there occurred bloody incidents between the Communities Chuschi and Quispillaccta[.]93

91 APETT, Exp. Quispillaccta, Queja de Salomón Galindo al Jefe de las Comunidades Campesinas de Ayacucho (28 June 1972).

92 APETT. Exp. Quispillaccta, Queja de Dionisio Conde y Cirilio Huamaní Flores al Jefe de las Comunidades Campesinas de Ayacucho (4 August 1972).

93 APETT, Exp. Quispillaccta, Queja de las autoridades de Quispillaccta al Director de la ORAMS de Ayacucho (14 April 1975).

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Two days later Quispillaccta leaders addressed another petition, this time to the head of

OZAMS, the provincial office of SINAMOS, warning that their neighbors were determined to graze livestock in their lands at Suhuhuaranra as well.94

The following year Chuschi authorities told the President of the Agrarian League

of Cangallo that nearly 100 hectares of their communal grazing lands had mysteriously

been burned over.95 While the petitioners elected not to point the finger at their longtime foes in this particular case, one might suspect that the quispillacctinos committed the arson in retaliation against the infractions they reported the previous year.

Adding More Ripples to the Current: Other Sources of Inter-Community Conflict

Chuschino farmer Alejandro Allcca woke up early on the morning of 18 October

1975 to check on his two-year-old bull, which he had fenced in alongside other cattle from the community in the punas of Totora. Much to his surprise, he found that his bull had disappeared, along with those belonging to Luis Huaycha, Abelardo Callahua, Pedro

León, and the community cofradía—totaling five bulls. This time, the aggrieved chuschinos concluded that a quispillacctino had committed the crime. They had one particular suspect in mind: indigenous cattle rustler Teobaldo Achallma.96 We will remember from chapter one that Achallma’s own compoblanos had problems with his

94 APETT, Exp. Quispillaccta, Queja de Gregorio Núñez Paoctaipe y Luis Núñez Ccallocunto al Coordinador de la OZAMS de Cangallo (16 April 1975).

95 APETT, Exp. Chuschi, Solicitud de investigación de las autoridades de Chuschi al Coordinador de la OZAMS de Cangallo (2 September 1976).

96 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 77 (2 tomos), “Instrucción contra Teobaldo Achallma Chuchón y Candelario Alarcón Ayala por el delito de contra el patrimonio,” Manifestación de Alejandro Allcca Vilca ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil de Pampa Cangallo (11 November 1975).

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social conduct. Now, he was about to give chuschinos a reason to object to his behavior

as well.

When Chuschi authorities went knocking on Achallma’s door, he did not even

bother to deny the charges. Once caught, Achallma went right into the headquarters of

the Civil Guard in Pampa Cangallo and stamped his fingerprint on a written confession.

In it, he admitted having stayed the night at the house of his friend Candelario in

Hualchancca one Thursday evening in October—he could not remember the exact date.

The following morning, the pair went riding toward the district of Chuschi on two horses owned by Candelario. At around midnight, they entered the site of Totora, where a herd of cattle had been grazing. They rounded up five of them and herded them back into

Quispillaccta. When they reached the point of Quimsahuasi, they sold two of the bulls to a drifter for 2,500 soles a piece. They took the three remaining bulls to an abandoned house in Toccsaycca, slit their throats, divvied up the meat, and went their separate ways.

Before pressing his finger to the deposition, Achallma added for the record that even after he had confessed to the crime and agreed to pay a fine, Chuschi authorities mistreated him badly; he did not go into detail about this mistreatment.97 His alleged accomplice

endorsed a similar affidavit, explaining that his friend Teobaldo had gotten himself into a

legal dispute that he needed to straighten out by traveling to Ayacucho City. Such a trip

required money that the indigenous quispillacctino simply did not have, so he solicited

97 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Manifestación de Teobaldo Achallma Chuchón ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil de Pampa Cangallo (12 November 1975).

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his friend’s assistance in robbing and selling cattle from the Chuschi punas. 98 By all appearances, this was an open and shut case.

But it did not end there. The following morning, Teobaldo and Candelario returned to the courtroom and recanted their sworn testimonies. Candelario clarified that he was not only innocent of the crime for which he had been charged, but that he had never even been to Chuschi! Sure, he knew Teobaldo and even let the man stay in his home from time to time; but he had no idea that his friend “was an element dedicated to cattle rustling.” But what of his sworn confession? Calendario remembered having placed his mark on a statement, but only later did he learn of its content. He attributed the miscommunication to the fact that he gave his statement in his native tongue. Since the police did not speak Quechua, they had either misunderstood or altered his statement, he said.99 Teobaldo Achallma’s complaint contained a similar accusation. He had indeed

stayed at his dear friend’s house in Huallchancca, as his affidavit indicated. However, he

went straight home to Quispillaccta the very next day, remaining there until the aggrieved

chuschinos came knocking on his door accusing him of stealing their animals. Like his

illiterate friend Calendario, Achallma swore to have naively fingerprinted a testimony

that he had not understood.100

Chuschi authorities could not speak for the outsider Calendario, but they were

certain that they had fingered the right man in Achallma. They even signed a written

98 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Manifestación de Candelario Anastasio Alarcón Ayala ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil de Pampa Cangallo (12 November 1975).

99 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Instructiva de Candelario Alarcón Ayala (13 November 1975).

100 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Instructiva de Teobaldo Achallma Chuchón (13 November 1975).

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statement, dated 24 November 1975, in which they called the quispillacctino’s credibility

into question:

The Inscribed [infrascritos], Authorities of the District of Chuschi, Province of Cangallo of the Department of Ayacucho etc.------CERTIFY: THAT, don TEOBALDO ACHALLMA CHUCHON, natural and vecino of the town of Quispillaccta, of the District of Chuschi, that this person does have a Judicial, Political, and Police record, [in] the Province of Cangallo and Ayacucho, for the crime of abigeato, robbery, and others, and he has now stolen five bulls from the pastoral site “Totora.” …[I]n the name of the truth we certify [this]…on behalf of the Community of Chuschi[.]101

Which side was to be believed? The Superior Court found the two men guilty and

sentenced them each to six months prison.102 If the court’s decision was correct, then it is

worth noting that rather than steal from his own village as he had done in the past,

Achallma chose to travel all the way to the punas of Chuschi to commit the crime,

suggesting that he deliberately targeted cattle from the rival village. If, on the other hand,

Achallma was falsely accused, then it seems that the chuschinos went out of their way to

pin the crime on a quispillacctino. After all, the aggrieved peasants never went into

detail about how they reached the conclusion that Achallma had stolen their bulls.

Alejandro Allcca, for example, only revealed that “after asking around, he learned that

one of the perpetrators was Teobaldo Achallma[.]”103 They then would have had to

101 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Certificado de las Autoridades de Chuschi sobre el carácter del inculpado Teobaldo Achallma (24 November 1975).

102 ACSJA, JP Cangallo Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Sentencia contra Teobaldo Achallma Chuchón y Candelario Anastacio Alarcón Ayala (20 March 1979).

103 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 132, Exp. 72, Manifestación de Alejandro Allcca Vilca ante el Instructor de la Guardia Civil de Pampa Cangallo (11 November 1975).

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fabricate a false confession and later go on record denouncing Achallma’s character.

Both scenarios thus illustrate that the inter-community rivalry was still strong in 1975.

And it continued in various forms into the early 1980s. In March 1981, brothers

Martín and Faustino Mendieta joined a handful of their quispillacctino neighbors in

stealing several horses and bulls from Chuschi and then feasting on their spoils. The

brothers’ participation in the crime was no coincidence—their father was Martín

Mendieta, the first quispillacctinos slain by the chuschinos during the battle of 6 May

1960. Some of the other participants in the act were locally known livestock rustlers,

such as indígena Asunción Llalli, whose escapades we discussed in the first chapter.

When captured, some of the quispillacctino suspects admitted that the crime had been a

deliberate effort to target the chuschinos, and that even the Quispillaccta authorities had

sanctioned it. One of the suspects said that the original idea had been Llalli’s, who

noticed that the chuschinos had been harboring the animals in one of the contested

territories.104 Apparently, the twenty-one years that had elapsed since the inter-village

battle that claimed Martín Mendieta’s life were not enough to keep Martín’s sons and

fellow villagers from exacting vengeance against the chuschinos. In this case, the

vendetta was a non-violent one, taking the form of organized livestock theft. As was the

case with Teobaldo Achallma, Asunción Llalli had already earned a reputation in

Quispillaccta as a misfit, and as with Achallma, Llalli’s decision to steal from the rival

hamlet gave chuschinos a reason to resent him as well.

104 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 191, Exp. 28, “Instrucción seguida contra Narciso Achallma y otros por los delitos de contra el patrimonio y robo de ganado.”

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Inter-village theft was just one way for quispillacctinos and chuschinos to

rekindle these hostilities. In 1981, Quispillaccta President Emilio Núñez Conde

commented that “not too long ago” Chuschi officials had halted a merchant who was

attempting to enter Quispillaccta through the district capital. They claimed that his

vehicle had scraped the shingles of the roof of someone’s house and slapped him with an

incommensurate fine of 1,500 soles. President Núñez interpreted this as a clear effort by

the chuschinos to “keep tradesmen from entering our Community, an act…which they

cannot continue doing indefinitely.”105 Apparently, even chuschino youths harbored ill-

will toward their neighbors. In a subsequent letter, President Núñez complained that the

students of Chuschi’s public high school and their parents treated the quispillacctino

students poorly, barraging them with “insults and offenses of personal character” and

defaming them as “occes.”106 This evidence suggests that local youths in the early 1980s

were attuned to their parents’ animosity toward the local “other”—a telling observation,

since it was the high school children of the district who would become Shining Path’s

local foot soldiers.

The Tide Again Rises: Territorial Disputes on the Dawn of Insurgency

While the above examples illustrate the broad spectrum of the inter-community

altercations, most of the litigation between Chuschi and Quispillaccta at the time of the

105 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, “Instrucción de la Comunidad Campesina de Chuschi contra la Comunidad Campesina de Quispillaccta por el delito de Interdicto de Retener y otro,” Denuncia de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (23 June 1981).

106 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Informe de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (12 October 1981).

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Shining Path uprising was over land. In March 1980—two months before Shining Path

launched its guerrilla struggle, the Quispillaccta attorney Gregorio Núñez Pacotaipe delivered a series of letters to the departmental Prefect alleging that the chuschinos had

spent the previous year encroaching upon the zones of Huancarumi Pampa, Pucacorral,

Quinua Ccochacancha, and Ingahuasi—the same lands that they had invaded back in

1961. Núñez indicated that the invaders had not only begun cultivating potatoes, broad

beans, and quinua in the mentioned fields; they had also been going about erecting

corrals and huts for their animals and planting Eucalyptus trees—all indications that they

were there to stay.107 On 10 October 1980, Cangallo Subprefect Máximo Gonzáles

Calderón sent a dispatch to the departmental Prefect reporting that the communities were

once again at loggerheads, citing a recent complaint lodged by Quispillaccta leaders

against their foes. Rather than describe the nature of the specific complaint, the

Subprefect saw fit to inform his superior in general terms of the historic rivalry that had

been mounting in Chuschi District since 1960:

1.-The neighboring peasant communities of Quispillaccta and Chuschi, have for some time now been sustaining various judicial actions, due to discrepancies over the possession of their lands, producing incidents that have even resulted in bloodshed, as was the case in the confrontation of the year 1960.

2.-The problem of discrepancy over the possession of lands still continues, for which to date they have been sustaining action before the Juzgado de Tierras (Land Court) of Ayacucho.

3.-For the aforementioned reasons, the members of both communities, have since incurred injuries, damages to sementeras or crops, but there

107 See ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 180, Exp. 61.

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have been no registered cases of [villagers from either community] reverting to violence[.]108

Nor did it appear that this conflict would come to an end any time soon. On 13

April 1981, chuschinos, through their acting President Alejandro Galindo, delivered a

letter to the judge of the regional Land Court denouncing their nemeses’ latest

shenanigans. Galindo reminded the judge that of the two communities Chuschi was in

fact the oldest, and that many of its land titles “date back to time immemorial and are

founded in antiquated documents from the Colonial [period].” Since that time, they had

made every effort to work these lands “tranquilly and pacifically,” despite numerous

attempts by their rivals to usurp them. Of course, there had been some regrettable

violence in 1960-61, but for the most part they had been cultivating the lands

peacefully—peacefully, that is, until mid-June 1980, when in a “premeditated plan of

provocation and expansionist determination” their foes began invading several chuschino

lands, including the long-contested sites of Loreta and Ingahuasi. Not content to

penetrate the lands, the invaders began raising livestock, erecting corrals and huts, and

harvesting broad beans and barley. In Chirapayocc, they had begun planting Eucalyptus

trees. In Arapapampa, a field where nearly 100 vicuñas once roamed, only fifteen of the

beloved camelids remained. That the quispillacctinos were a people “accustomed to

domination and abuse” was evidenced in the “incalculable” damage they had done not

just in Chuschi, but in other communities such as Totos and Canchacancha. This time,

108 ARA, SC, Caja 36, Of. Superioridad 1980, Oficio del Subprefecto de Máximo Gonzáles Calderón al Prefecto de Ayacucho sobre la queja de los dirigentes comunales de Quispillaccta (10 October 1980).

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the chuschinos estimated that the quispillacctinos had committed no less than five million

soles worth of damages.109

The following month, quispillacctinos commissioned communal President Emilio

Núñez Conde to “deny and contradict [the chuschinos’ charge] in all its extremities.”

Chuschi, he implied, did not have a monopoly on antiquity, for his community was also

“one of the oldest in the Department of Ayacucho[.]” But Quispillaccta was more than just an ancient village. It was a model village, one “of [a] traditional character, one of the

best organized, of a moral discipline and of absolute responsibility in the fulfillment of its corresponding duties and obligations, very respectful of the rights of others, [a] Peasant

Community that is permanently dedicated to systematic labor, as much in artisanship, as in that pertaining to agriculture and livestock…but without trying to create any type of problems with neighboring and adjacent Peasant Communities.” The letter went on to say that Quispillaccta was a hamlet “known for the seriousness [with which it approaches] all types of issues, without resorting to falsehoods, or malice, or violence, but rather to the contrary.” The same could not be said of Chuschi, however:

The peasant community of Chuschi has, since very remote times, since the colonial period, and even since the early stages of republican life, up to the present, systematically, from generation to generation, been bringing litigation against the community of my representation, resorting to violence in some cases, as occurred in 1960 when they even used firearms to victimize various members of the peasant community of my representation, killing several[.]

Now the chuschinos, in accordance with this “traditional custom” of conflict, had the audacity to bring trumped-up charges against the upstanding citizens of Quispillaccta,

109 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Demanda de Alejandro Galindo Parina ante el Juez de Tierras (13 April 1981).

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even though the latter had not “deprived them of a single piece of land[.]” Simply put,

the charges brought forward by the chuschinos were “capricious and false.” In fact, the

only thing the quispillacctinos were guilty of was jealously guarding their own property,

which had remained in their possession for generations. If anything, the chuschinos were

the ones out of line, for it was they who had begun planting Eucalyptus trees in the punas

of Quispillaccta “as if [these lands] had belonged to Chuschi.”110 The quispillacctinos

were so convinced that they were in the right that they penned another letter to the judge

requesting that each community provide land titles to settle the issue once and for all.111

The quispillacctinos let scarcely a month pass before making arrangements to settle the matter extralegally. According to Chuschi Vice President Marcelino Rocha, the quispillacctinos held a general assembly on 28 June 1983 in which they agreed to invade the lands of Huaracco, Ingahuasi, Pallcca, and Pucahuasi. They did this knowing full well that the chuschinos usually left these lands vacant during this season, once the grass and water supplies had been depleted. To make matters worse, some quispillacctinos had even begun irrigation projects in the common lands of Huaracco-Achcayacu—an endeavor that usually required the consent of both communities.112

The chuschinos had not exactly been upstanding citizens throughout all this,

either, Quispillaccta’s President countered. On the contrary, they had been going around

committing “a series of violent acts and destruction of a series of patrimonial goods” in

110 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Contesta de Emilio Núñez Conde a la demanda interpuesta por la Comunidad Campesina de Chuschi (19 May 1981).

111 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Solicitud de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (5 June 1981).

112 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Demanda de Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua ante el Juez de Tierras (3 July 1981).

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Quispillaccta, much to the “detriment of the harmony that they should be practicing…for

the good of both communities.” Just what were these outrageous acts? The previous

year they had committed violations typical of their “arbitrary and selfish” character,

seizing several quispillacctino cornfields on the outer limits of the community. As for

the most recent accusations put forward by the chuschinos, they were meritless. It was

true that they had begun constructing irrigation ditches in Chuschi, but that land was

vacant. And as long as he was setting the record straight, the President thought this might

be an appropriate occasion to deny a charge that his rivals had not yet brought against his

constituents! Rumor had it that someone had destroyed a few dozen chuschino homes in

Pallcca, and he just wanted to clarify that his villagers had nothing to do with it. That

way, if the chuschinos ever claimed otherwise, the judge could rest assured that this

would be done simply to “cause some harm and damage at the expense of the

members…of the peasant community [of Quispillaccta].”113

Sure enough, Chuschi’s newly elected President Marcelino Rocha reported the

destruction of thirty-nine homes at Pallcca and, just as the letter predicted, he blamed the

quispillacctinos. It had to have been them, Rocha insisted, adding, “We wouldn’t destroy our own huts, unless we were crazy.” Like his adversary, Rocha added that any further

accusations of property destruction in Quispillaccta would be false. He closed his letter

with the following statement: “We are peaceful campesinos who have never destroyed

homes.”114

113 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Preventiva de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (23 July 1981).

114 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Preventiva de Marcelino Rocha Cayllahua ante el Juez de Tierras (7 September 1981).

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As far as Quispillaccta President Emilio Núñez Conde was concerned, his

constituents were the only ones trying to keep the peace. He claimed to have invited his

counterparts to a roundtable to settle the dispute diplomatically, but that the meeting

never took place. While he could not be certain why the meeting fell through, he

suspected that it had something to do with a general “negligence or lack of interest on the

part of the leaders of the peasant community of Chuschi.”115 Simply put, the chuschinos were being unreasonable, a sentiment Núñez intimated to the judge on 12 October 1981.

It is here that we get the first implicit mention of the Shining Path insurgency, which had been going on in the district for nearly a year and a half. On behalf of his comuneros, the village leader stated:

That, in this period of serious national emergency, of catastrophic economic crisis in which we are all immersed, of multiple acts of generalized terrorism and of multiple other irregular acts of all kinds, being Peasant Communities…we shouldn’t submit ourselves to the minimization of our daily activities, rather, to the contrary, we should unite together in solidarity, to try to move forward, to seek a favorable solution to so many of the problems that affect us. …But, unfortunately, the members of the Peasant Community of Chuschi…with their rare, conceited, hateful, arrogant mentality…for whatever strange reason, keep causing us multiple problems of negative character, with an incredibly habitual contempt, with a superiority complex [criterio de superioridad anímica], [behaving] as if the members of the Peasant Community [of Quispillaccta]…belonged to a failed, mentally and economically deficient social stratum[.]

The statement went on to list the latest wave of infractions committed by the chuschinos.

As if “the considerable damages and injuries of the course of the year 1960” were not enough, the chuschinos had just over the past month invaded the Quispillaccta side of

115 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Preventiva de Emilio Núñez Conde ante el Juez de Tierras (23 July 1981).

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Rupascca and Pallcca, displaced the quispillacctino inhabitants, burned down at least fifteen homes, and let their cattle, horses, and sheep roam free.116

That same day, however, Chuschi Vice President Marcelino Rocha addressed a letter to the judge with a different version of the altercation. On 7 October, some 300 comuneros from Quispillaccta, some on horseback and others afoot, armed with cocobolos and firearms, crossed onto the Chuschi side of the border and expelled the

Chuschi residents. When they refused to budge, the invaders began assailing them with whips and cocobolos. Outnumbered and out-armed, the chuschinos had no choice but to take immediate flight. At this point, the raiders went about sacking homes, stealing everything from livestock, to radios, to clothing and household items. Not content simply to pillage, the aggressors, in typical “anti-peasant” and “delinquent” fashion, promised to kill the displaced chuschinos.117

The Quispillaccta President assured the judge that such accusations were made only with the purpose of “slandering and defaming” his community. He then directed a stern warning toward his foes:

It is not acceptable that they keep committing violent acts and systematic provocations…threatening to victimize human beings, I ask that you bring this to the attention of…the Peasant Community of Chuschi, so that they can reflect a bit, and realize that with these acts that unhinge the public order, they are causing serious damage not only to the Peasant Community of my representation, but to their own Peasant Community of Chuschi, because these types of acts can lead to a series of negative consequences, above all, of an economic stamp[.]118

116 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Informe de Emilio Núñez Conde al Juez de Tierras (12 October 1981).

117 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Informe de Marcelino Rocha al Juez de Tierras (12 October 1981).

118 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 64, Informe de Emilio Núñez Conde al Juez de Tierras (12 October 1981).

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Was there a “hidden transcript” behind this message? Were the “negative consequences”

alluded to here strictly “economic,” or did the Quispillaccta leader intend to involve

Shining Path in his response?

The next day, Quispillaccta authorities brought their own suit against the

community of Chuschi, in which they denounced many of the infractions discussed

above.119 “[S]ince the Republican period,” the accusation read, the community of

Quispillaccta had peacefully maintained its territories—that is, until their neighbors decided to “perturb this tranquil and pacific possession” in May 1960. Since then, quispillacctinos had suffered countless attacks against their territorial integrity. On 3

March 1981, for example, a band of chuschinos, armed with guns and other weapons, violently invaded the Quispillaccta side of Viscacha, Huaycco, Ccoyllorccocha,

Ruirocorral, Quimsacruz, Pallcca, Arapa, and Rupascca. Next, the invaders “in even more savage form…burned eleven houses or huts that were meant eventually to house the animals of the community. …[I]nside there were kitchen goods, clothes, [and] cereals.”

The violations did not end there. On 28 May, the perpetrators “without any consideration whatsoever and in barbaric form destroyed five houses…in Chanquilchayocc,

Ccoyllorccocha, and also inside of the principle property of [Quispillaccta], making all the construction materials disappear[.]” On 10 June, the aggressors then seized

Quispillaccta holdings at Ingahuasi, burning the communal house to the ground. Finally, on 8 October, just five days prior to the writing of the petition, the chuschinos committed arson on fifteen more homes in Rupascca and Pallcca, destroying another ten in Rupascca

119 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 153 (Juicio de la Comunidad Campesina de Quispillaccta contra la Comunidad Campesina de Chuschi por interdicto de retener y cobro de daños y perjuicios).

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and Arapa “from the foundation.” In all, the aggrieved summed the damages at around

two million soles—the communal house was, after all, “big and of a superior value to the

other burned and destroyed houses[;] to transfer the bricks alone took us days and weeks

given that the distance was so far[.]” The accusation reminded the judge that the chuschinos were “indignant, untrustworthy people lacking consideration or conscience, much less do they follow the norms and principles of a peasant community, but they do constantly look for trouble since they are people who are poorly advised, instructed by third parties.”120

This was the political climate in Chuschi District during the initial months of the

Shining Path insurgency. As we have seen, collective memories of the bloodshed of

1960-1962 resurfaced time and again over the next twenty years. In petition after

petition, villagers from both sides of the river cited these tragic episodes in order to

cement their claims over the disputed territories and justify their own actions. Joanne

Rappaport discusses how Andean peasants in twentieth-century Colombia have used

memories of violence to shape their contemporary political agendas and collective identity and consciousness.121 This certainly seems to have been the case in Chuschi and

Quispillaccta, where villagers were evoking the violence of 1960-1962 in legal disputes

as late as 1981, which demonstrates that the bloodshed was still on peasants’ minds when

Shining Path began its guerrilla insurgency in 1980.

120 ARA, JT-FPA, Leg. 36, Exp. 153, Demanda de la Comunidad de Quispillaccta ante el Juez de Tierras (13 August 1981). The “third party” reference is to Chuschi’s educated, non-indigenous authorities, whom the accusers felt had manipulated the town’s indigenous masses.

121 See Joanne Rappaport, The Politics of Memory: Native Historical Interpretation in the Colombian Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).

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‘BARELY SEPARATED BY A HILL’: INTER-VILLAGE RELATIONS AND CONFLICTS IN HUAYCHAO

In May 1975, Víctor Gamboa of Huaynacancha made the long trek to Huanta City

to bring abigeato charges against huaychainos Saturnino Cayetano, Cecilio Díaz, and

Alejandro Huamán.122 As he dictated to the judge, his village and Huaychao were

“barely separated by a hill.” He explained that he usually let his livestock, which

consisted of thirty-one llamas, some sheep, and “much more,” graze and fertilize this and

other hills surrounding the hamlet. During the early hours of 1 April, however, he

noticed that nine of his llamas were missing. Now, he knew from prior experience that

his camelids sometimes wandered into his sheepfold, but this time he found no sign of

them in the cancha (field). Once day broke he organized a search commission made up

of village authorities and family members to retrieve the missing animals. “The

footprints,” he declared, “led straight to Huaychao.”123

Disputes between peasants of Huaychao and neighboring communities such as

Huaynacancha were not uncommon before the Shining Path insurgency. These clashes

did not foment the kind of community-level mobilizations and violence that occurred between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, however. An analysis of the types of inter-village

networks that were in place in the Iquichano highlands before the rebellion will help

explain this difference.

122 ACSJ, JP Huanta, Leg. 68, Exp. 67, “Instrucción Contra Saturnino Cayetano y otros sobre el delito de robo en agravio de Víctor Gamboa” (1975).

123 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 68, Exp. 67, Denuncia ante el Juez Instructor contra Saturnino Cayetano y otros (26 May 1975).

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Crossing the Mountains: Iquichano Networks

Since the days of the hacienda, huaychainos maintained ties to other Iquichano populations through a series of communication and kinship networks. As discussed in chapter one, the hacienda system itself served as a catalyst to this process, as peasants from different estates and villages often worked as temporary field hands on neighboring haciendas for paid wages or for chicha and coca leaves. One recalls that hacendado

Rafael Chávez even organized labor competitions between peasants from throughout the region. Thus, communication between peasants from this part of the Huanta highlands was not rare. Nor were kinship networks. Julián and I conversed with President

Fortunato and tayta Esteban about this one afternoon over several helpings of a flat highland bread called pan chapla. Although they were born on the Huaychao hacienda,

both men had family dispersed throughout the Huanta punas. The two men recalled

making frequent visits to their relatives’ communities during religious festivals and

rituals. During these trips, young men and women would sometimes fall in love or, as

tayta Esteban put it, “the woman [would] trick the man,” prompting one partner to settle

in the other’s community. When this was not possible, nuclear families remained

dispersed, with the father usually working on the hacienda and his wife and children

living in another location.124 After the dismantling of the Huaychao hacienda in 1975

and 1976, many Iquichano peasants who had previously married into Huaychao-based

families settled in the community.125

124 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huaman, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

125 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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Religious festivals provided members from extended kinship networks with an opportunity to come together and strengthen social bonds. At the same time, this provided a social channel through which non-relatives from disperse communities could fraternize. Huaychainos hosted Carnavales and Easter festivities as well as the August

Festival. During these occasions, peasants from throughout the region would come to

Huaychao and celebrate. A successful celebration would have included as many as 300 visitors from Huaynacancha, Uchuraccay, Llalli, and other nearby villages.126 As tayta

Mariano explained, many of the guests were not peones of the hacienda, but simply

people “who would come just for the chicha de molle.”127

To be sure, these gatherings were not always harmonious, and after several nights

of heavy drinking, conflicts between villagers from different communities were sure to

arise. When we asked President Fortunato and tayta Esteban if fights ever erupted between villagers from different communities during the fiestas, the former exclaimed,

“Uff! Tons!” The two men told us that when they were adolescents living on the hacienda in the early 1970s, they would get into fist fights with young men from

Uchuraccay, Huaynacancha, and Cunya. Often, these brawls involved whips, slings, and rocks. President Fortunato showed us the scar on his head from getting hit by a rock during one such altercation.128

126 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006); Interview with Inocencio Urbano and Ernestina Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006); Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

127 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

128 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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Such confrontations often had gendered undertones. As was the case in Chuschi,

the defense of local women against sexual aggressions from the outside was integral to

the paternalistic orientation of the community. Within moments of my arriving to

Huaychao for the first time with Julián and historians Ponciano Del Pino and Freddy

Taboada, twenty-seven-year-old Leandro Huamán, President of Huaychao’s Civil

Defense Committee, escorted us into the despacho and assembled as many villagers as he

could find. After all had arrived, Leandro gestured towards the juez rumi and announced

in Spanish, presumably so that each of the visitors would understand: “See that large rock

out there? That is our juez rumi. That’s where we punish sinners, and that’s why we

have no adulterers in our community.” The message was clear: keep your hands off our

huaychaina women. After laying down this groundwork, later that day Leandro invited

Julián and me to stay with him and his wife, Petronila, during our field research.129

Inter-village romances were sure to develop in times of fiesta, for which indigenous peasants from throughout the Iquichano highlands partook. During

Carnavales, groups of single men and women would parade around the village drinking, singing songs, and ringing bells. Typically, young men and women carried talcum powder and paper streamers to fling flirtatiously onto members of the opposite sex.

When they could not afford this, they used mud and the native rayan plant. In such a festive atmosphere, inter-village romances were sure to develop. When this happened, comunero men became possessive of women from their village. “For example,”

President Fortunato explained, “let’s say someone is dancing with a señorita and her

129 Field notes, Huaychao (13 January 2006).

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boyfried [enamorado] tries to cut in—people would fight over things like that.”130 When we asked Juana Ccente, a comunera in her mid-fifties, if people from different villages fell in love during these occasions, she shook her head, “Manam, the [women] were kidnapped.” When asked to explain what she meant, she clarified, “Because during the games, [boys and girls] would just be playing, playing [sic] and then [the boy] would treacherously take one of the girls [to the mountains and rape her]. After that they sometimes got engaged, but sometimes not. Those groups were from different places and different villages, and the kidnapping was always against the other village.”131 We asked

her if the women ever fought back or ran away. “Manam,” she lamented, “What can she

do if she’s being carried away by several guys? They’d carry her away in a premeditated

effort.”132

Mama Juana still remembered the altercations that ensued whenever a young man

discovered that his sister had been sequestered from a man from another village. During

these disputes, men would turn the talcum powder, streamers, and other festival items

into weapons, flinging them at one another to instigate fights.133 At other times, brawls

would break out between groups of men from each village. According to mama Juana,

this happened a number of times between men from Huaychao and neighboring

Huaynacancha. As soon as they saw their neighbors coming up the mountain,

huaychainos prepared themselves for the worst. “Here come the people from

130 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

131 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

132 Ibid.

133 Ibid.

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Huaynacancha rumi makis [stone-in-hand]. Surely they will hit us all,” they alerted one

another. “Hit them with rocks from above!” the huaychainos resolved. But the

huaynacanchinos were prepared, daring their neighbors: “If you want it, come and get,

I’m [sic] gonna hit you so hard[.]”134 Tayta Ciprián recalled that during these battles, the

neighbors would challenge one another to fight ‘like men’: “Let’s fight without slings,

without whips, without rocks. Let’s fight fist to fist [pulso a pulso]!”135 Mama Juana

made a similar observation, claiming that the feuding neighbors would call each other

“yutu caldo” and “wallpa leche.”136 Translated as “partridge soup,” “yutu caldo” denoted

a person who reported his opponents to local authorities immediately following the

altercation; it was a sort of Quechua “Tattletale.”137 The insult was meant to suggest that

one’s opponent would not simply “let the best man win.” Meaning “chicken’s milk,”

“wallpa leche” stood for men who would sooner drink away their problems than resolve

the dispute through physical fighting. Such emasculating insults were sure to escalate the

quarrel, and after retorting, “Ah, carajo, don’t call me yutu caldo and don’t call me

wallpa leche!” physical fighting usually followed.138

On occasion, these altercations resulted in tragedy. On 1 May 1975, huaychainos

were hosting a local “Santa Cruz” festival in which peasants from throughout the region were invited. The fiesta appeared to be a success, with peasants mingling, dancing, and

134 Ibid.

135 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

136 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

137 Ibid.

138 Ibid.

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consuming large amounts of chicha and aguardiente. By the early evening many of the guests were good and drunk, some had already passed out. It was around this time when

Eulogio Ramos, an indigenous peasant from the outside village of Putaja, cornered an eighteen-year-old local girl named Emilia Huaylla, and began dancing up on her and suggesting that she “take a walk around the corner” with him. But when Emilia made it clear that she was in no mood to accept Eulogio’s advances, Eulogio grew violent, grabbing and kicking her, attempting to rape her on the spot, according to Emilia’s court testimony. Emilia screamed for help, and within moments several men from the village had come to her defense. But even after they had separated the two, one of the huaychaino men—Eulogio’s brother-in-law no less—struck Eulogio over the head with a club, inflicting a wound so penetrating that it killed him later that night. Eulogio’s attacker later told officials that he been on friendly terms with his wife’s brother before that incident, and that he had acted strictly to defend the virtue of his compoblana

Emilia.139

The above analysis supports Mallon’s observation about the cultural primacy of

the defense of local women against sexual attacks from the outside. As we have seen,

this gendered cultural logic triggered many of the physical altercations between

huaychainos and peasants from neighboring villages. In the murder case, we see that this

logic trumped any protections that extended kinship may have offered, as Eulogio’s

relationship to his huaychaino attacker was not enough to prevent the latter from

139 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Sin Leg. (1975, 7 exp.), Exp. 48, “Instrucción contra Alejandro Quispe y otros por el delito de contra la vida,” Manifestación de Emilia Huaylla (5 May 1975); Manifestación de Alejandro Quispe (12 May 1975).

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murdering him. What mattered more was that Eulogio was endogenous to Huaychao yet

had attempted to rape a huaychaina woman.

The feuds usually ended there, however. As mama Juana explained, the fighters usually made amends following a physical confrontation, and in many cases the rapist married the woman in question.140 This not only made the incident socially acceptable,

but it further extended kinship networks beyond the immediate community. Tayta

Ciprián also confirmed that such inter-village altercations occurred “only during the fiestas when [people] were drinking and not every day.”141 Unlike in Chuschi, then,

inter-village disputes in Huaychao were not long-lasting, and they were socially accepted

under the setting of the village fiesta.

Mama Alejandra underscored this last point when she described a violent

encounter involving campesinos from Huaynacancha and the Huaychao annex of Tupin

sometime around the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was during Carnavales, and everyone

had been drinking heavily when a dispute broke out in the mountains between some

huaynacanchinos and a tupino named Marcelo Yaranqa. According to mama Alejandra,

the huaynacanchinos hit Yaranqa over the head with a cowbell. When the varayoqs from

Huaychao learned of the attack, they brought Yaranqa back to the village to examine his

injury. Mama Alejandra had noticed that Yaranqa’s head was bleeding profusely and that

he was choking on his own blood. The authorities transported the injured Yaranqa to

Huanta, but he died en route. “But the author of the crime won,” mama Alejandra

professed, “Because he said: ‘That happened in Carnaval, and five or more people

140 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

141 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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always die during Carnaval.’ Things like that happen in every village during

Carnaval.’” As mama Alejandra remembered it, his defense convinced Huaychao’s

customary authorities not to report the incident to bureaucratic authorities in Huanta City,

and after arriving to the town they simply buried Yaranqa and returned to the punas.142

Tracing the Tracks: Inter-Community Cattle Rustling

Most cases of inter-village cattle-rustling in Hauychao also involved the neighboring village of Huaynacancha. Let us return to the May 1975 case in which huaynacanchino Víctor Gamboa organized a search committee to retrieve his nine missing llamas. After five days of fruitless investigation, the huaynacanchino search committee noticed that Saturnino Cayetano had been storing llama hide, wool, and meat in his home outside the village. Since Cayetano was away at the time, they asked his wife, Catalina Quispe, how the two had acquired the llamas. According to Gamboa,

Quispe informed them that since she and her husband were mayordomos of the upcoming

Fiesta de las Cruces, they had purchased the llamas from Cecilio Díaz and Alejandro

Huamán on the night of 30 April just for the occasion. Gamboa testified that the investigators brought Quispe to the village despacho, where they informed Lieutenant

Governor Jesús Llancce of the situation. The huaychaino authority called Cecilio Díaz in for questioning; Alejandro Huamán, Gamboa said, had already fled the zone. According to Gamboa, Díaz not only confessed to his and Huamán’s role in the robbery, but he was so “repentant” that he even agreed to repay his victim for his losses through a

142 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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combination of money and livestock. Gamboa added that after settling the matter of the

repayment, the Lieutenant set the ‘repentant’ abigeo free.143

The testimonies of the accused abigeos do not appear in the court record; nor do

those of the Lieutenant Governor and Catalina Quispe. Only huaychaino Saturnino

Cayetano gave a testimony in his own defense when police brought him before the court

in Huanta City on 28 May. The twenty-six-year-old indígena stated that he had nothing to

do with the crime for which he stood accused. He said that it was true that he had come

into the possession of a llama earlier that month, but that he had obtained it legitimately

as part of his role as mayordomo of the upcoming festival. Moreover, at the time that the

alleged robbery took place he was in Huanta City seeking employment and looking to

purchase a plot of land. He had remained there until one day earlier, when police brought

him in for questioning. Cayetano further denounced Gamboa’s claim that his wife,

Francisca, had confessed to having purchased llamas from Díaz and Huamán. From what

his family back in Huaychao told him, Gamboa and his neighbors had violently sacked

his wife’s home, committing “a series of abuses” and stealing a llama’s hide, three

cowbells, and upwards of 2,300 soles that he and his wife had wrapped in a handkerchief

and stashed inside a basket. Cayetano refuted Gamboa’s claim that he had found llama

meat inside the residence.144 Barring further incriminating evidence, the court ruled in

favor of the defendant.145

143 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 68, Exp. 67, Denuncia ante el Juez Instructor contra Saturnino Cayetano y otros (26 May 1975).

144 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 68, Exp. 67, Instructiva de Saturnino Cayetano (28 May 1975).

145 ACSJA, JP Huanta, Leg. 68, Exp. 67, Sentencia sobre la instrucción contra Saturnino Cayetano y otros (19 March 1976).

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Nearly every huaychaino elder Julián and I spoke with in 2006 and 2007 had a

story to tell about huaynacanchino cattle rustlers. One of those elders was tayta Santos.

We paid tayta Santos a visit outside of his hilltop choza on an unusually sunny Sunday

morning. He told us that particularly after the dismantling of the hacienda, it was not

unusual for people from Huaynacancha, Uchuraccay, and other locations to steal cattle

from Huaychao. Typically, they would steer the animals into the nearby mountains, kill

them, and take the meat back with them to their homes. He remembered one particular

case in which a huaynacanchino named Gamboa stole eighteen llamas from a villager of the annex of Ccarasencca. Gesturing towards each of the adjacent mountains, he spoke of how he organized a search party to retrieve the lost animals: “That guy took them over

there and over there, and in the mountain of Pucaccasa we lost the footprints. But we

kept looking and discovered that the footprints led to Huaynacancha.” When the search

party reached Huaynacancha, local authorities investigated the matter. Together, the

search party and the Huaynacancha leaders concluded that Gamboa had been assisted by

one of the victim’s Ccarasencca neighbors. Authorities from Huayacancha and

Huaychao, led by Huaychao’s Lieutenant Governor, then brought the alleged accomplice

to the Huaychao despacho and tied his hands together with a rope “so that he couldn’t

escape.” Next, the authorities interrogated him while flogging him with a chicote.

Between lashes, the interrogators demanded, “Why did you rob?” Tayta Santos told us that the authorities continued this procedure “until he talked or confessed.” Finally, the alleged accomplice confessed to his role in the crime and revealed that he and Gamboa had already made use of the animals. Before paying a fine in pigs and sheep, he directed

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them towards a profound crevice in one of the mountains where they found the remains

of the stolen llamas.146

Mama Alejandra told us that her father-in-law also lost a pregnant cow to abigeos

from Huaynacancha around the 1970s. She joined him and other huaychainos in a search

party for the stolen animal. After tracing the footprints of the cow over the mountain and

into Huaynacancha, mama Alejandra and her compoblanos found the rustlers and several

other huaynacanchino men waiting for them with sticks and hatchets, their dogs barking

furiously alongside them. As they approached the village, the men taunted them: “Come,

carajo! We have your cows right here! Come and lay down your lives!” After telling us

that the search party had no choice but to return to Huaychao empty handed, mama

Alejandra sighed, “They ended up eating those cows.”147 But this was a rare case in

which Huaynacancha leaders did not allow the search party to conduct its investigation.

In most cases, village authorities from both communities aided one another in these investigations.

Tayta Mariano’s recollection about having lost a couple of cows to cattle thieves around the 1970s illustrates this last point. He organized a ten-man search committee and

traced the tracks to Huaynacancha. When they got there, Huaynacancha leaders authorized them to search each home for the stolen cattle. As they approached the home of Simeón Velásquez and his father Víctor, they could see slabs of meat inside. “They were slick [lisos],” Tayta Mariano said of the duo, who he believed had previously stolen cattle from two of his neighbors. When the huaychainos demanded entry, however, the

146 Interview with Santos Huaylla, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

147 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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owners objected violently and a fight erupted as men from both sides began beating each other with clubs. “Even their wives hit us in the head with clubs. And they hit us in our

bodies too!” he added in disbelief. Eventually, the huaychainos overpowered the

Velásquezes, and at nightfall they and the other Huaynacancha authorities escorted the

father and son to Carhuahurán to report the incident. Unfortunately for tayta Mariano,

the Lieutenant Governor of Carhuahurán was a friend of the Velásquezes and let them go,

telling their captors, “[Víctor is] too old and sick to withstand [a trip to Huanta City]

anyways, and if he dies on the way you guys will be held responsible.”148

Clearly, livestock theft was as much a problem in the Iquichano highlands as

elsewhere. The major difference between these villages and those in Chuschi District,

however, is in the degree of cooperation that indigenous authorities from neighboring

communities extended each other when it came to resolving these disputes. With some

exceptions, huaychaino and huaynacanchino authorities not only allowed each other’s

search parties to conduct investigations in their villages, but they also aided in those

investigations. And as we have seen, after authorities and investigators from the two

communities identified a suspect, they usually handed those suspects over to local and

regional authorities.

To Reach the Mountaintop: Inter-Village Hierarchy

Although Huaychao technically fell within the jurisdiction of Huanta City,

villagers usually reported serious cases to officials in Carhuahurán, which was much

148 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006).

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closer and more accessible. Huaychainos preferred to settle disputes internally, and

indeed they did most of the time, but for cases that required the attention of external

officials, they usually turned first to Carhuahuán and then to Huanta City as a final

alternative. Carhuahurán’s de facto political jurisdiction over Huaychao was cemented

through the vara visita, the same ritualized visit of authorities that occurred on a smaller

scale within the village of Huaychao.149 Beyond the village, Huaychao’s top officials

would make frequent trips to Carhuahurán to meet with the population center’s

authorities and pay respect to its religious icons. During Christmas time, for example,

Huaychao’s authorities traveled to Carhuahuán to pay their respects to its nativity scene.

Mama Juana explained this to Julián and me one night over a bowl of potato soup: “The

people from Carhuahurán controlled this whole area. That’s why my grandfather always

said, ‘The varayoqs must go there and greet El Niño Jesus. Otherwise, there will be

problems.’ So, the new varayoq would go and greet El Niño, and that’s how it was each

year.”150 This tradition not only ensured that Huaychao and neighboring communities

remained interconnected socially and politically, but it also reinforced a regional political

hierarchy for which Carhuahurán enjoyed relative hegemony. The “problems” that mama

Juana’s grandfathers warned would result if local leaders failed to adhere to the tradition may have been as much cosmological as social and political. As tayta Mariano’s above anecdote implies, however, some huaychainos resented having to defer to Carhuahurán’s political authority. Ideally, they would have preferred to have more autonomy over local affairs.

149 See chapter one for a more detailed description of the vara visita in Huaychao.

150 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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This inter-community hierarchy did not only cause resentment towards

Carhuahurán. After the Agrarian Reform, Iquichano communities and their indigenous authorities found themselves in competition over matters of political jurisdiction. This explains the petition drafted by huaychainos Zenobio, Juan, and Julia Quispe in March

1975, just three months before the land reform officially reached Huaychao. The Quispes declared that Faustino Aguilar, the Lieutenant Governor of Pampalca, a village about two or three leagues away, had “usurped the right of our own Lieutenant [Governor] of

Huaychau [sic]” by meddling in a dispute between them and a Pampalca woman named

Ana Ramos. According to the plaintiffs, Aguilar had ruled in favor of Ramos, determining that the Quispes’ animals had ruined the fields where her mashua, oca, and olluca tubers grew. The Quispes dismissed the Pampalca leader’s ruling as “completely false,” reasoning that if it were true, “our Lieutenant Governor don Jesús Llancce

Huamán, would have made use of his rights as authority of the location and not of some other location that doesn’t pertain to him,” as Aguilar had done. Aguilar’s actions, they concluded, could only be interpreted as a blatant “abuse of authority and usurpation of

[political] functions[.]”151 This was more than just an attempt by the huaychainos to clear themselves of the charges brought against them. What they sought was a legal precedent establishing Huaychao’s political autonomy within the Iquichano highlands after the Agrarian Reform.

151 ASH 1975, Queja ante el Subprefecto contra el Teniente Gobernador de Pampalca (10 March 1975).

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CONCLUDING REMARKS

As this chapter has demonstrated, the nature of inter-village relationships in

Chuschi contrasted greatly with those in Huaychao.

We have seen that Huaychao was not free of inter-village conflict. What is

interesting, though, is the way that these conflicts played out. Many of them occurred

under the socially accepted space of the local fiesta, where battles over the defense and

rape of indigenous peasant women were fought in almost ritualistic fashion with clearly

defined rules of engagement. This helped mitigate any long-term antagonisms that might

develop at the inter-community level. Moreover, the fiestas themselves and the

interpersonal relationships that developed during them encouraged the expansion of

kinship and social networks across community borders. This networking was also

reinforced through the regional political hierarchy, which encouraged inter-village

cooperation when it came to resolving crimes such as cattle theft. Still, this inter-village

hierarchy and the issue of village political autonomy became a point of contestation after

the Agrarian Reform.

Chuschi, on the other hand, had been engaged in an intense conflict with

Quispillaccta during the entire period of this study. This was superficially a dispute over

land boundaries and communal autonomy. But this only begins to scratch the surface of

what lay behind the rivalry. We found, for example, that chuschinos and quispillacctinos saw themselves as distinct ethnic groups. At the same time, we saw that the defense of local women was also a major issue for indigenous peasants in the district. The mere insinuation of rape against local women was enough to provoke violent retaliations against the rival village. Also at stake was the civil-religious autonomy of each

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community, which became jeopardized symbolically whenever members from the rival village destroyed, defaced, or captured religious icons. Finally, we learned that this was not a generational conflict, but one that parents passed on to their children through oral tradition, so that the tensions were still on the minds of locals in 1980. This is an important point, for as we will see in the following chapter, it was the teenaged villagers who would join the ranks of Shining Path.

Chapter Four: Crossing the River

Initial Peasant Support for Shining Path, 19781983

The moment had finally come. After twelve years of rule, the Revolutionary

Government of the Armed Forces would relinquish executive power and Peruvian

citizens would participate in national democratic elections. Florencio Conde was the lone

registrar on duty in Chuschi late-Saturday night, 17 May 1980, the eve of the election, when a bellowing voice caught his attention from the other side of the door: “¡Abre carajo, somos militares! [‘Open up, dammit, it’s the military!’].” Conde had scarcely enough time to react before the door flung open with a loud bang. The five strangers who stormed in were not soldiers but armed youths wearing ponchos and ski masks. “Go ahead and yell if you want to die, otherwise keep your mouth shut!” one of them barked.

Pressing a gun to Conde’s chest, one of the assailants tied the startled registrar to a bench while the other four ransacked the office. The masked youths then took the ballot boxes out to the village square and lit them on fire before hoisting the communist flag. Conde managed to escape just in time to watch the offices of the registry and Consejo go up in flames.1

The burning of the ballot boxes and administrative center in Chuschi on 17 May

1980 marked the first episode of the Shining Path guerrilla insurgency in Peru, the famed

Inicio de la Lucha Armada (ILA-‘The Initiation of the Armed Struggle’). For the next

1 Gorriti, The Shining Path, 17; Rosa Vallejos, “Volver a los 17: A diecisiete años del inicio de su cruenta ‘lucha armada’ Sendero Luminoso reaparece con aparatoso atentado,” Caretas, 1997; ADP, Testimonio 100883; Marté Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 116.

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twenty years, Shining Path guerrillas (senderistas) such as the ones who stormed the

Chuschi registry would engage in a brutal civil war against the Peruvian state and

counterinsurgency forces, a civil war that would claim the lives of 69,000 Peruvians,

most of them indigenous peasants.

In the following section, I will briefly outline the Shining Path’s political origins,

leanings, and ideology. Then, I will describe the different ways that indigenous peasants in Chuschi lent their support to the insurgents. Finally, I will attempt to make sense of this early peasant support for the rebellion by emphasizing the ideological disconnect between the leaders of the insurgency and the indigenous campesinos who supported it.

Situating initial chuschino and quispillacctino responses to Shining Path within the larger cultural and historical framework that I have outlined in previous chapters, I argue that

Quechua-speaking peasants’ local experiences and collective understandings regarding

culture, power, and justice were just as critical to their initial support of Sendero

Luminoso as political ideology or the fear factor.

THE PERUVIAN COMMUNIST PARTY-SHINING PATH (PCP-SL)

The Shining Path emerged in Ayacucho in 1970 as a militant faction of the

Peruvian Communist Party (PCP). Originally known as “By Way of the Shining Path of

Mariátegui,” Shining Path traced its ideological roots to the PCP’s philosophical

forefather, José Carlos Mariátegui.2 During the height of the indigenista movement in the 1920s, the Peruvian intellectual argued that the highland peasantry had the potential

2 Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación del Perú (CVR), Informe Final (9 vol., Lima, 2003), vol. 2, 30.

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to lift the country from its economic plight, but that they were inhibited by the economic

stranglehold of the landed oligarchy, the gamonales. In order for Peru to progress as a country, he argued, this semi-colonial, semi-feudal system needed to be dismantled.3

Mariátegui helped found the Socialist Party, serving as its Secretary General until his untimely death in 1930, after which members formed the Peruvian Communist Party.4

For the next three decades, the PCP struggled to gain a foothold in Peruvian civil

society. In 1963, political infighting precipitated an internal split within the party, with

some members breaking off to form the National Liberation Front (FLN). The following

year, the PCP itself split into two factions. One, the PCP- Unidad (‘Unity,’ PCP-U),

favored a Soviet-style pursuit of socialism through legal political channels, while the

other, the PCP- Bandera Roja (‘Red Flag,’ PCP-BR), adopted a Maoist emphasis on

armed revolution.5

Much of the activity from the PCP-BR took place in the countryside, with rural youth and teachers espousing Mariátegui’s assessment of Peru as a semi-feudal, semi- colonial society. The only way to overcome this, they believed, was through armed revolution. The PCP-BR had a strong presence in Ayacucho during the 1960s, particularly on the campus of the UNSCH in Ayacucho City. In 1965, at the Fifth Party

Conference, members accused party leader Saturnino Paredes of embezzlement and footdragging with respect to the party’s proposed armed struggle. This led to more internal

3 José Carlos Mariátegui Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality, trans. Marjoy Urquidi (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971 [1928]), 21, 23-4.

4 Germán Núñez 1993, Pensamiento politico peruano siglo XX (Lima: Universidad de Lima, 1993), 51.

5 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 30-31; CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 28-30.

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splintering, with members of the Communist Youth forming the militant PCP-Patria

Roja (‘Red Nation,’ PCP-PR). The PCP-PR asked UNSCH philosophy professor

Abimael Guzmán Reynoso to head the splinter group, but Guzmán declined, electing instead to head up military affairs in Bandera Roja’s Special Work Commission. In

1970, however, Guzmán formed his own faction, the PCP-Sendero Luminoso (‘Shining

Path,’ PCP-SL), a militant party dedicated to immediate, Maoist-style insurrection.6

Born a year after Mariátegui’s death, the mestizo Guzmán grew up in the cities of

Mollendo and Arequipa, located in the southern Peruvian Andes. In 1953, Guzmán enrolled in Arequipa’s San Agustín University, where he would later earn degrees in philosophy and law. Two senior professors at San Agustín University greatly impacted

Guzman’s political and philosophical outlook. One professor, Miguel Angel Rodríguez

Rivas, was a philosophy professor who specialized in Kantian theory. Under Rodríguez

Rivas’s tutelage, Guzmán wrote his thesis on Kant’s theory of space. The other instructor to impact Guzman’s ideological development was Stalinist painter Carlos de la Riva. As

Peruvian scholar Iván Hinojosa explains, Stalin epitomized orthodox communism to

Stalinists such as de la Riva and Guzmán: “[They] remembered Stalin as the victorious

Grand Marshal of the Second World War. His name became a synonym for efficacy and discipline, while his purges and other crimes were considered social sacrifices necessary for the construction of socialism.”7 After Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign challenged conventional communism in Moscow, de la Riva embraced the Maoist

6 Carlos Iván Degregori, Ayacucho, 172-184; Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 31.

7 Iván Hinojosa “Poor Relations and the Nouveau Riche,” in The Shining and Other Paths, ed. Steve J. Stern (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 66.

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doctrine of communism. Guzmán followed suit, and by the time he took up a faculty

position at UNSCH in 1962, he had already begun to embrace Maoism.8

To Guzmán, Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution offered an appropriate

model for combating peasant marginalization in Peru. While Marx and Lenin envisioned a primarily urban, proletariat social movement, Mao took “agriculture as the base, and industry as the leading economic force.” More importantly, Mao placed armed struggle at the forefront of his political vision. At a time when the Soviet Union and the PCP sided with legal political revisionism, Mao represented the “true” socialist path of an agrarian-led armed struggle. Guzmán traveled to the People’s Republic during the

Cultural Reformation of the 1960s, where he received training in everything from

Marxist philosophy to guerrilla combat.9

Upon returning from China, Guzmán began to interpret Mariátegui according to

his own convictions. He later stated, “I returned to study Mariátegui and understood that

we had a first-class Marxist-Leninist who had analyzed our society in depth.” Guzmán

believed that the indigenista would have approved of the Peruvian Maoists’ rhetoric of

violence. This assumption, Guzmán asserted, “[I]s not speculation but simply a product

of understanding the life and work of José Carlos Mariátegui.” It was in this context that

in 1970 Abimael Guzmán proclaimed Sendero Luminoso Mariátegui’s inevitable political

heir.10

8 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 32; Gustavo Gorriti, “Shining Path’s Stalin and Trotsky,” in The Shining and Other Paths, ed. David Scott Palmer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994 [1992]), 152-153.

9 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 33; James F. Rochlin, Vanguard Revolution in Latin America (London: Lynne Reinner, 2003), 33-34.

10 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 33-34; Rochlin, Vanguard Revolution, 34-35.

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Over the next decade, Guzmán began recruiting a modest cohort of UNSCH

faculty, students, and regional school teachers into his vanguard party and honing its political ideology. Shining Path’s Central Committee, which became known as “The

Sacred Family,” consisted of Guzmán and a select group of his most trusted colleagues.

Tired of what they viewed as centuries of corrupt politics, senderista leaders criticized

the “political revisionism” of the Peruvian left. While other leftist groups continued to

pursue their agendas through legal channels, Guzmán drove Sendero Luminoso

underground and out of the public sphere. Even when the GRFA announced its decision to hold democratic elections in 1980, the PCP-SL refrained from joining the other twenty-eight leftist parties at the Constituent Assembly or participating in the general elections.11

Guzmán saw himself and his party as the protagonists in a broader historical

drama. He assumed the nom de guerre “Presidente Gonzalo [‘President Gonzalo’],”

anointing himself the “fourth sword” of global communism, after Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

Throughout the 1970s, Professor Guzmán articulated the party’s political ideology known as “Gonzalo Thought,” emphasizing uncompromising loyalty to the party and a personality cult to himself, the self-appointed party leader.12 Only the strictest

compliance to this ideology would be acceptable in order to fulfill the party’s historic

mission. Guzmán articulated this vision during his famous “We are the Initiators” speech

at the close of the PCP-SL’s first Military School on 19 April 1980:

11 Poole and Rénique, Peru: Time of Fear, 46-48; Hinojosa, “Poor Relations,” 72-73; Gorriti, “The Shining Path’s Stalin and Trotsky,” 173, 177.

12 Degregori, Ayacucho, 183-212.

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[A]t last, the Party provides the masses of the world with their long- desired liberator. …Never before have men had such a heroic destiny, so it is written. …It is the most luminous and glorious mission ever entrusted to any generation. …The imperialist superpowers of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other powers invade, penetrate, undermine, destroy, and seek to bury their fear. …We are entering the strategic offensive of the World Revolution. The next fifty to a hundred years will bring about the sweeping away of imperialism and all oppressors. …From darkness will come light, and there will be a new world.13

Guzmán and his colleagues insisted that this mission could only be accomplished through violence: “[W]e will not proceed by slow and delaying mediations, or in quiet rooms or hallways. We will enter the breach through the din of armed action. This is the way to proceed. The appropriate and correct way. The only way. …The future lies in guns and cannons. … Let us initiate the armed struggle!”14 For Guzmán and other PCP-SL leaders, armed struggle was the only way to purge social, political, and economic corruption. This would require followers to sacrifice their lives for the cause. While, as

Gorriti notes, other socialist-communist movements have asked revolutionaries to die for their cause, few parties demanded self-sacrifice the way that Shining Path did.

According to Gorriti, Shining Path leaders constantly reminded cadres about “the quota,” defined as “the willingness, indeed the expectation, of offering one’s life when the party asked for it.” Shining Path leaders assured their followers that they would only reach socialist-communist utopia by “crossing the river of blood.”15

13 Abimael Guzmán Reynoso, “We are the Initiators,” in The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics, eds. Orin Starn, et al., (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 311-313.

14 Ibid., 314.

15 Gustavo Gorriti, The Shining Path, 104.

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Between 1980 and 1983, chuschinos and quispillacctinos symbolically crossed

this river by helping Shining Path insurgents carry out a series of summary juicios

popularares, or “popular trials,” against local enemies of the insurgency. After claiming the life of one of these victims in Chuschi’s main square around September 1983, the senderistas reportedly announced: “This is how the supporters of [Peruvian President]

Belaúnde die, and that is how you all will die if you don’t support us.”16 If we were to

take this statement at face value, we might conclude that indigenous peasants supported

Shining Path either because they subscribed to its political ideology about overthrowing

the Belaúnde state and eliminating its supporters, or because they were simply too afraid

to resist. Yet to the chuschino and quispillacctino peasantry, victims such as the one mentioned above were killed not only because they supported the Peruvian state, but because they were seen as moral deviants who had long escaped justice and disrupted public order. For the man killed was none other indigenous quispillacctino Amancio

Rejas Pacotaipe, the same Amancio Rejas whom neighbors had earlier denounced as an abigeo, drunkard, womanizer, and bully; the same Amancio Rejas who for years had eluded both customary and state justice.

THE SHINING PATH IN CHUSCHI

In a dimly lit Ayacucho City hotel room, native chuschino Fulgencio Makta17 recounted to Alberto and me his experiences as a one-time senderista. The Shining Path first entered Chuschi District around 1978. The first party members were faculty

16 ADP, Testimonio 200806.

17 This is a pseudonym.

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connected with the local high school, Ramón Castilla, along with university students

from UNSCH. Most of the first senderistas in Chuschi were not from the district, but they had been stationed there to teach classes. Back then, Fulgencio, a young lad of about eleven, had already proved to be a bright kid. But he was also a strong-willed kid with a short temper, which frustrated both his parents and his teachers. One day,

Fulgencio got into a fistfight with another student over a lost textbook. When his father complained to Fulgencio’s chuschino teacher, the latter confessed that he simply could not control the boy and suggested that he change teachers. Fulgencio’s father did just that, and his new teacher immediately took a liking to the youngster. For the first time,

Fulgencio felt that he had a teacher who believed in him. The instructor encouraged the

boy in everything from his studies to his love of music. Before long, the teacher began

slipping Fulgencio political pamphlets and literature about revolution: “What’s

revolution?” the adolescent would wonder as he flipped through the pages. Finally, the

day arrived when Fulgencio’s teacher invited him and a select group of students to learn

more about this and other concepts. The curious chuschino adolescents followed the

professor to a run-down house in the hills outside the main village. The house belonged to none other than Felipe Aycha, the local butcher whom many believed was running his own cattle rustling enterprise inside the village. But as Fulgencio told Alberto and me,

Felipe was none the wiser, for it was his son, Ignacio, who had volunteered his home for the occasion. Ignacio, a university student at UNSCH in Ayacucho City, was now a

PCP-SL militant. From that point forward, Ignacio, the school teacher, and a handful of other senderistas hosted clandestine meetings of the PCP-SL’s local chapter every day

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after school to a select group of adolescent boys and girls right there in the butcher’s

home; thus marked the commencement of Chuschi’s escuela popular (popular school).18

Much has been made of the ideological training undergone by Shining Path cadres.19 Indeed, Fulgencio emphasized that most of the PCP-SL’s clandestine meetings in Chuschi were dedicated to ideological training rather than to military strategy: “It was mostly for learning to read and write leftist literature [‘lectura popular’]. …They would teach [the writings of Mao, Lenin, Marx, and Mariátegui] to us every day: ‘We’re going to make war and do this and that.’” But what the studies on Shining Path have tended to overemphasize is the extent to which these political messages actually resonated with

Andean boys and girls with relatively little comparative experience. Fulgencio, for one,

did not necessarily interpret the PCP-SL’s message in the strictly ideological fashion in

which it was drawn up:

I would wonder, you know, as a little guy [un chiquillo]…‘What will that be like? Are we going to have planes or something?’… I didn’t really think that I was going to join a revolution like just like that. …I just repeated what they told me, mostly [out of gratitude for the] care and respect that they rendered me. That was all. That was all, that was all, that was all. …[My participation] had nothing to do [with revolution] or carrying guns, not at all. It was just a matter of doing what [the teacher] told me to do, because I thought that it would please him if I did those things.20

18 Interview with Fulgencio Makta. Ayacucho City (31 July 2007); for more on the PCP-SL’s escuelas populares, see CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 37-38.

19 See, for example, Gabriela Tarazona-Sevillano, “The Organization of Shining Path,” in The Shining Path of Peru, ed. David Scott Palmer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994 [1992]), 196-198; Gorriti, The Shining Path, 29-36; Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 99-101.

20 Interview with Fulgencio Makta. Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

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As Fulgencio described Chuschi’s escuela popular to Alberto and me, he very

matter-of-factly remarked: “Oh, and one day [Abimael] Guzmán came [to meet the

recruits]. He just came up and started talking to us, ‘Hello,’ just like that.” I could hardly

contain my astonishment: “No way, I don’t believe you!” Fulgencio nodded, affirming

that the Shining Path leader had made a brief visit to Chuschi shortly before the ILA:

“They [Guzmán and other PCP-SL leaders] came to the escuela and showed us…the first

weapon [that would be used in the armed struggle]. It was a revolver. It was the party’s first weapon, and they put it right there on the table.” At the time, however, young

Fulgencio did not even know who Abimael Guzmán was: “He came [to Chuschi], and I remember it well because years later I saw a photograph of him. And it was only when that picture came out of Comrade Gonzalo that I recognized him: ‘Oh, that’s the guy [we met at the escuela popular]!’ Ahh…” Fulgencio chuckled at his own ignorance as he recounted this episode: “It was only then that I realized who he was. I had no idea that he was the máximo dirigente [supreme commander]. No, no, no, I had no idea that he was presidente.”21 It is likely that Fulgencio’s memory deceived him—a case of a comunero

thinking that all qalas look alike, or that he had simply re-imagined this meeting with

Guzmán in order to assign himself a significant place in history. On the other hand, there

is every reason to believe Fulgencio’s account, given the significance of the occasion.

Chuschi had been selected—probably by Guzmán himself—to be the location of the ILA,

and the Shining Path leader may very well have insisted on meeting some of the local

youths who would participate in that historic event.

21 Ibid.

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Fulgencio was not chosen to participate in the ILA. In fact, he had no idea that it had taken place. Fulgencio was about thirteen-years-old at the time: “I was playing soccer in the village square and I didn’t even notice that the office of the registrar was on fire.” I chuckled, “You mean you were there?” Fulgencio nodded, “There I was just playing soccer and the next thing I know—pam!—they hoisted the [communist] flag.

But listen, they had taken that flag from the escuela popular. And I thought: ‘Hey, that’s the flag [from the escuela popular]!’”22 Shortly after the burning of the ballot boxes on

17 May 1980, however, Fulgencio was invited to take a more participatory role in the local insurgency:

“I had been playing soccer in a field up in the distance, and afterwards I went to take a bath [in the river]. Then, they [the Shining Path militants] came looking for me, saying that they were organizing a committee in the village square, but that they had been looking for me first. I wondered why, why were they looking for me specifically? …When I got [to the village square], they informed me that I had been chosen to lead [the local] comité popular [popular committee] and they had me stand before all the villagers like an authority—of the comité popular!”23

Joining the comité popular was just one way for comuneros from the district to support the guerrillas. Another way was to join the ranks of the party’s Popular Guerrilla

Army (EGP). EGP militants received military training, and they were mostly drawn from the pool of teachers and university students. Most of the EGP militants were not from

Chuschi, although a few, such as Ignacio, were. Whereas the EGP militants were responsible for the military aspects of the insurgency and could be dispatched to other areas, members of Chuschi’s popular committee dealt mostly with local matters; their

22 Interview with Fulgencio Makta [pseudo.], Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

23 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007); For more on the function of the comités populares, see CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 36.

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principle function was to select individuals to be tried in Sendero’s “popular trials” and to come up with appropriate punishments for them. As Fulgencio reiterated, the actual punishments were usually carried out by the senderista militants of the EGP. In all, only a handful of chuschinos and quispillacctinos—maybe fifteen in all—became senderistas.

But there were other ways for local peasants to support the insurgency without joining the popular committee or EGP. These included: cooking for the rebels; lodging them in local homes; carrying the communist flag; serving as messengers; serving as vígias who alerted the rebels of incoming raids from the Peruvian security forces; informing; suggesting names to be placed on Shining Path’s “black list” for future sanctions; aiding in the physical punishment of Sendero targets; and simply showing up to and actively participating in Shining Path rallies, expeditions, incursions, and popular trials. It is in this sense that we can speak of “indigenous peasant support” for the

Shining Path rebellion. For the purposes of the current study, I take into account the broad spectrum of support that comuneros rendered to Shining Path, from direct participation as senderistas on one end to passive endorsement through rally attendance and hospitality on the other end. What I would like to emphasize, though, is that, at least in the initial part of the insurgency, each of these forms of support was voluntary. And were it not for the indigenous peasants who voluntarily rendered varying degrees of support to the insurgency, it would certainly not have been as successful as it was early on.

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WHY SUPPORT SHINING PATH?

Why did the PCP-SL enjoy this type of success in Chuschi and Quispillaccta

during the initial years of the insurgency? The following analysis, while not discrediting

intimidation or political ideology as motivating factors, demonstrates that comuneros’ local experiences and cultural understandings regarding power and justice were crucial to their decision to render support to the guerrillas. As we will see, indigenous peasants in the district hoped that Shining Path’s radical justice would redress many of the local

crises discussed in previous chapters, reestablishing moral authority and public order

within their communities.

Local Deviants

In mid-1982, Shining Path guerrillas brought two prisoners before a crowd of

comuneros in the Quispillaccta barrio of Catalinayoq. The rebels denounced the two

men as abigeos and requested the villagers’ permission to make public examples of them.

When the villagers complied, the senderistas submitted their captives to some 200 lashes

of the látigo before killing them. While we do not know the identity of the first victim,

Peruvian anthropologist Marté Sánchez Villagómez has identified the second victim as

local indígena Teobaldo Achallma.24 We will recall from chapter one that Achallma’s

compoblanos had accused him of livestock theft on numerous occasions since 1975. But,

as we have seen, his record of moral deviance dated back much further. As early as 1961

Quispillaccta’s authorities and comuneros were blaming local crop failures on

24 Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 176.

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Achallma’s alleged incest with his own mother. This was the same Achallma who had been married and divorced at least three times and whose lovers had accused him of everything from abandoning his paternal obligations to infidelity. It was the same

Achallma whose compoblanos accused him of free-riding, arguing that he had neglected his faena duties, failed to pay his share of communal taxes, and illicitly appropriated lands belonging to his neighbors and the collectivity. And he had committed each of these social breaches with virtual impunity. To the rebels, Teobaldo was just another abigeo. To Achallma’s compoblanos, he represented everything that they viewed as morally contagious and publically disruptive within their community: a habitual livestock rustler who stole from his fellow villagers; a sexually immoral specimen who committed adultery and incest; a father who had abandoned his children; and a free-rider who placed individual advancement above that of the collective. He was, in a word, a deviant, a deviant who in their view continued to scoff at customary authority and communal values. Achallma’s neighbors had weighed the costs of his actions against the extreme justice of the PCP-SL, and in the final analysis, Sendero’s justice prevailed.

Around September of the following year, Amancio Rejas Pacotaipe and his son,

Jesús, were resting in their Ccaccachacra home when a band of about fifteen or twenty armed militants woke them up and escorted them back to the plaza in Chuschi, where they were joined by another eighty sling-clutching militants and scores of unarmed chuschino and quispillacctino men, women, and children. The crowd held an ad-hoc

“popular trial” for which Amancio stood accused of supporting the government and of cattle rustling. The young Jesús stood accused as well. His crime? Being the son of a cattle-rustling government supporter. The participants later reasoned: “what the father

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does, later the son will do the same or worse than his progenitor!” When the militants

asked the crowd if they wanted to kill the two quispillacctinos, they were met with shouts

of “Yes, let them die!” Asked a final time, the comuneros responded with a resounding

“Yes!” The senderistas happily complied, shooting them both. The father, we are told,

died on the spot. The son did not go so easily. Jesús Rejas attempted to get up several

times, forcing the executioners to fire several rounds before he finally succumbed to his

wounds.25

As was the case with Teobaldo Achallma, Amancio Rejas’s compoblanos felt that

he had deserved this extreme punishment. Once again, it was not that Rejas had stolen

cattle that got him into trouble with his compoblanos during the Shining Path years.

Rather, it was the perception that he was a moral deviant who refused to change his ways.

Rejas, we will recall, had been linked to theft since at least 1959, when he allegedly

jumpstarted his career as a petty thief by stealing jewelry and livestock from a local cofradía. For the next twenty years, Rejas’s name weaved in and out of the archival

record for charges of local cattle rustling—village authorities at one point drafted a

certificate of conduct indicating that they had been unable to correct his behavior. As if his abigeato was not enough to outrage many of his neighbors, Rejas also appeared to be

a hypocrite, for, as discussed in chapter one, he did not hesitate to bully other villagers

whom he deemed guilty of the same crime. But to his fellow compoblanos, Rejas was

more than just an abigeo. He also was believed to have violated major gender codes. In

2007, tayta Víctor told us that Rejas had been in the habit of raping the women he stole

25 Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 176, 256-261; ADP, Testimonio 200158.

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from. Even his own friend, Bernardo “Ccello” Núñez, stood up during a village

assembly in 1975 to denounce Rejas as a proud womanizer. During that same meeting,

authorities and comuneros accused Rejas of free-riding when they decried his

unwillingness to “fulfill his duties as a comunero.” He was also a known drunkard, a

man accused of stealing 900 soles from a neighbor and spending a good deal of it on

booze. For all his moral deviance, Rejas’s fellow villagers had at one point pleaded with

the Juez Instructor to “punish [Rejas] in the most exemplary manner.” Instead, there is no record that Peruvian courts ever found Amancio Rejas guilty for any of the crimes for which he stood accused inside village borders. Given Amancio Rejas’s long and tenuous history with quispillacctino villagers and authorities, it comes as little surprise that, when given the opportunity, his compoblanos condemned both him and his son to a brutal death sentence at the hands of Shining Path rebels.

As numerous villagers told Sánchez Villagómez, the militants executed another local abigeo that same day. The victim was Asunción Llalli, the indigenous quispillacctino who led off our discussion of local misfits in chapter one.26 As mentioned

in that chapter, Llalli had confessed to stealing livestock from his own neighbors after an

afternoon of heavy drinking back in 1973. Even then, his neighbors had dubbed him “a

delinquent…and well-known abigeo.” Although I found no further archival evidence

linking Llalli to intra-village theft in the decade preceding his assassination, it seems that enough of his neighbors were dissatisfied enough with his moral plight to condemn him to death at the hands of the guerrillas.

26 Llalli’s assassination is recorded in Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, footnote on 256-57.

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Of course, not all abigeos were quispillacctinos. We will recall from the first

chapter that one of the most notorious abigeos, the one whom locals accused of running his own cattle-rustling enterprise, was the chuschino butcher Felipe Aycha. To many of his compoblanos, Felipe Aycha was solely responsible for the wave of organized

livestock rustling that had swept the village for more than a decade. And whereas he

described himself as a man who had made the necessary sacrifices to put his children

through school, his fellow chuschinos saw him as a shameful patriarch whose own

brothers-in-law had disavowed for being a wife beater. Similarly, his peones had complained of his apathy towards traditional codes of reciprocity, citing cases in which he had failed to treat them to helpings of meat that he had contracted them to steal. This was also a man who had broken compadrazgo pacts by stealing from his qala compadre.

And as with the quispillacctinos mentioned above, he had done all of this with virtual impunity, threatening and mocking those who attempted to bring him to justice—even if they were customary authorities.

Yet Aycha was also the father of a Shining Path militant, not to mention the owner of the house where the party’s local chapter had held its clandestine meetings.

Notwithstanding Aycha’s unique position vis-à-vis the rebels, comuneros still urged PCP-

SL militants “blacklist” him. The rebels finally succumbed to this popular pressure around 1983. According to Fulgencio, Aycha learned of the rebels’ intentions—I suspect that his senderista son warned him—and fled the zone before they could detain him: “He never returned. ….Who knows what became of him…[the senderistas] never even punished him, they didn’t punish him, but they sure did search for him. They searched for him and when they couldn’t find him they killed his wife. They killed his wife, just

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killed her.”27 On the surface, this measure appears out of sync with our discussions from previous chapters. Most comuneros in Chuschi and Quispillaccta shared a protectionist impulse with respect to local women. However, when we consider the archival data analyzed in chapter one, this punishment is actually consistent with this cultural framework. Let us revisit the language of the 1977 petition penned by chuschino authorities in which they denounced Felipe’s entire peasant household: “[A]s far as we are concerned, every member of that family, starting with the father don Felipe Aycha, and mother and children are dedicated exclusively to this aforementioned poor conduct

[of abigeato][.]28 To the authorities who drafted this certificate, then, the entire Aycha household was engaged in this detestable profession. They believed that Felipe Aycha’s shameful patriarchal example had infected his entire family, and because his wife was not above this criminal behavior, she had in a sense relinquished her implicit right to the community’s physical protection. Besides, it seems that in the long run not even Aycha could escape Sendero justice, for he was eventually executed at the hands of the rebels.29

And what of Felipe’s son, Ignacio, one of the children alluded to in the above

statement as part of the family of abigeos? After all, we know from the first chapter that

Ignacio was one of the local youths who had scoffed at customary values and authority. I

offer this explanation. The rebels had little choice but to bring Ignacio’s father to justice,

for comuneros saw him as one of the village’s most vile social deviants and biggest

27 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

28 ACSJA, JP Cangallo, Leg. 152, Exp. 83, Certificado de las autoridades de Chuschi sobre la conducta de Ignacio Aycha [pseud] (12 November 1977). Emphasis added.

29 This is according to information collected by Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, although I have withheld the page number here in order to protect the family’s surname.

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threats to public order. Had they not succumbed to public pressure and brought Felipe

Aycha to justice, the senderistas would have risked losing legitimacy within the community. Ignacio’s case was different, however, for he was one of the party’s few chuschino combatants. Thus, the party was willing to forgive his previous history of abigeato provided that he did not revert to his old ways as a senderista. This was in fact a major way that the party was able to maintain legitimacy within peasant communities, for it offered one-time moral deviants a clean slate, an opportunity to be forgiven of their prior social trespasses, if they joined the insurgency as armed combatants and refrained from moral backsliding. This notion of moral “cleansing” or “rebirth” through the

Shining Path insurgency was used throughout the Peruvian countryside, and it represented a mutually beneficial social pact between the rebels and the indigenous peasantry.30 For campesinos, this system enabled erstwhile deviants to do the dirty work of bringing other local deviants to justice. At the same time, peasants could rest assured that these one-time delinquents would be held to the same ethical standard as everyone else, and that the guerrillas would not hesitate to punish their own kind for any moral slippages. For the senderistas, this unwritten pact with the peasantry provided them with a pool of potential cadres who had already demonstrated their penchant for violence and delinquency. Only now this delinquent predisposition could be channeled into the revolution. It also gave the guerrillas legitimacy in the eyes of the peasantry, for it established that they had at least some moral capacity for forgiveness.

30 Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 177-78.

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The deviants mentioned above were not the only chuschinos and quispillacctinos

submitted to Sendero justice; they were simply among the first and most extreme cases.

During the opening three years of the insurgency, numerous villagers were punished for the same types of social infringements as the ones for which Llalli, Achallma, Rejas, and

Aycha paid with their lives. However, comuneros rarely urged the rebels to kill other villagers for these social infractions, instead encouraging the senderistas to make public spectacles of them. I would suggest that this was because, unlike the figures mentioned above, villagers did not see these other targets as people who were habitually delinquent.

These people only required a punishment that would discourage them and others from spiraling into moral deficiency. Thus, the Shining Path’s system of justice, replete with

‘warnings’ about more drastic measures, corrected perceived crises in public order and in the local administration of justice run by both the customary authorities and the Peruvian

state.

The first category of people punished under this new system was the abigeos. As

one comunero from Quispillaccta told Sánchez Villagómez, “In these parts there used to

be people who would steal for the sake of stealing, they’d even take our animals that

were tied up, but when the terrorists [sic] came, they submitted them to 50 lashes. They

didn’t kill them, but if they kept on [stealing], then they would kill them!”31 And as the

Peruvian anthropologist discovered, comuneros were very much in favor of this, for they

saw it as an effective system of extralegal justice against the crime. “Well, on the one

hand the punishment [of public floggings] was good,” one chuschino told Sánchez

31 Quoted in Ibid., 170. Emphasis added.

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Villagómez, “because during that period the abigeos stopped stealing, in fact they practically disappeared [fled the zone], and [those who remained] started behaving themselves [ya estaban tranquilos][.]”32

Others punished were those whose private lives had threatened internal order.

One of these men was the chuschino Pío Taquire, a janitor at Ramón Castilla. Taquire was married with children, but rumor had it that he had been sleeping around with other women. He was also believed to have engaged in domestic violence against his wife.

Sometime around 1981, the guerrillas sequestered Taquire, stripped him down to his underwear and socks, and paraded him around the village square with a sign posted to his back that read: ‘¡por mujeriégo y pegalón de su mujer!’ [‘for being a womanizer and wife beater!’].33 According to Isbell, public whippings of men accused of beating or cheating on their wives became commonplace after that, leading more and more chuschina women to denounce their husbands before the rebels.34 Fulgencio agreed that the punishment of adultery was a major reason why he and other villagers supported the rebels:

Question: Were villagers more or less in favor of punishing mujeriégos? Answer: Of course. Question: What do you mean, ‘Of course’? Answer: Those were the people who committed adultery. Question: But, but why were the villagers in favor of [punishing them]? Answer: The villagers were in favor [of punishing them] because [adultery] was bad. Question: Frowned upon?

32 Quoted in Ibid., 173.

33 Ibid., 252-53.

34 Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 84.

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Answer: Yes, frowned upon. That is, it was a sickness. …It was a sickness that the children and teenagers growing up around here shouldn’t have been exposed to.35

Not even women escaped such sanctions, as one comunero from Chuschi recounted to

Sánchez Villagómez: ‘[The senderistas] took a married woman who was [sleeping] with

another married man, and punished them both, they cut her hair. …Those guys [the

senderistas] were good! There were no more abigeos, or adulterers!”36 And, as Sánchez

Villagómez’s subjects informed him, it was not only PCP-SL militants who carried out

these non-fatal punishments. Often times, comuneros did the whipping, hand-tying, and hair-cutting, further evidence of their active participation in and approval of Shining Path justice.37

As these examples have shown, the reasons that the non-chuschino senderistas

gave for targeting individuals during the opening phase of the rebellion did not

necessarily reflect the motivations that chuschinos had for targeting those same

individuals. While the senderista outsiders put people like Amancio Rejas, Teobaldo

Achallma, Asunción Llalli, and Felipe Aycha on their blacklists for offenses against the

party, comuneros living in the district were more concerned with addressing historically- rooted crises of justice and public order. Villagers turned to the summary “popular trials”

to accomplish what both customary and state law had failed to do: to correct the behavior

of the villagers they considered morally corrupt and socially corrupting. In most cases,

villagers saw PCP-SL justice as a warning against ethical deficiency, only endorsing the

35 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

36 Quoted in Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 171.

37 Ibid., 173.

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penalty of death for individuals they felt had been relentlessly undermining a number of social norms and codes of conduct for years, even decades, on end. Nor were these comunero deviants the only ones the peasants felt needed to be brought to justice. So did the abusive qalas, to which we now turn.

Race, Class, and Authority

On the first day of June 1982, ten hooded senderistas armed with machine guns brought Chuschi Governor Bernardino Chipana before a crowd of comuneros in the village square. Denouncing Chipana as a “police informer,” the rebels stripped the qala authority naked and paraded him around the village square as the crowd jeered. But when the senderistas proposed to publically execute Chipana, the comuneros responded with an emphatic: “No!”38

Chipana’s story is telling inasmuch as it speaks to comuneros’ expectations of

Shining Path justice. In chapter one, we introduced Chipana as a chuschino migrant who stood accused of rustling livestock from his qala neighbor and compadre. There, we learned that Chipana had also violated traditional compadrazgo bonds. In chapter two, we reintroduced Chipana as the vecino Governor whom comuneros had voted out of public office in 1981 for imposing arbitrary taxes on the peasantry and appropriating their livestock. The timing of his run-in with the senderistas tells us that Chipana either refused to give up his post after being popularly dethroned, or he simply resumed it within a year of his removal. In either scenario, the will of the vecino power holder

38 DESCO, Violencia política en el Perú: 1980-1988, 2 vol. (DESCO Ediciones: Lima, 1989), 83.

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trumped that of the local indigenous peasantry. In the final analysis, comuneros’

perception of Chipana as an illegitimate authority probably weighed more heavily on

their decision to submit him to Shining Path justice than the issue of whether he had been

a police informer. What the campesinos who participated in Chipana’s extralegal

tribunal had intended to do was to publically humiliate and displace an abusive qala

authority. Once that had been accomplished, they saw no reason to end his life.

As chronicled by Isbell, the senderistas, enjoying “enormous popular support,”

put two more chuschino authorities on trial in December 1982 before expelling them

from the district. One of the accused authorities was Mayor Vicente Blanco.39 Fulgencio

added that before running the Mayor out of town, his former comrades had stripped him

naked, made him walk around the perimeter of the village square, and flogged him with a

chicote.40 Blanco was the mestizo school teacher with whom Isbell had her own confrontations in 1975. During those altercations, Blanco had failed to respect his social boundaries as a qala by intervening in traditional comunero festivities. Blanco, we will

also recall, had stood accused of using his education and his political authority to

appropriate the community’s economic and natural resources. This was to say nothing of

his criminal record, which included charges of rape and attempted murder. Blanco

continued to govern in 1982, which explains why comuneros submitted him to the

Shining Path’s local tribunal. Yet as with Chipana before him, the comuneros did not ask

for Blanco’s head, a point that Fulgencio articulated: “They whipped [castigar] him.

39 Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 86.

40 Interview with Fulgencio Makta. Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

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They whipped him, but that was it. …It was just so that he would stop misbehaving. It

was just a warning, that’s all.”41

Bernardo Chipana and Vicente Blanco were just two of several qala authorities submitted to this treatment. By the year’s end, most qala authorities had been completely

displaced from the district. This, I believe, was one of the main reasons why local comuneros supported the rebels. Even though he was a young teenager at the time,

Fulgencio comprehended the stranglehold under which the qala authorities had the villagers. Fulgencio had been present when Vicente Blanco ordered his political subalterns to attack Isbell and her crew in 1975. When asked why villagers had not come to her defense, he replied: “Well, he was an authority—they were qalas—and we had to obey them.” “Why? Why did you have to obey the qalas?” Fulgencio’s reply suggested that even as a child, he had a clear understanding of the qalakunas’ local power:

The qalas were the lettered people. They could do anything to you. They could throw you in jail if you didn’t obey them. They were feared, because they had all the power. …They were usually white…lived inside the village, and bossed people around like it was nothing. ...The comuneros were another group of people who had their chacrita [little chacra] way up in the mountains, they had to go back and forth [between the village and the mountains] with their livestock—those were the comuneros, the people. But not the qalas. The qalas had other people who took care [of their fields and animals], like ‘Take care of my livestock,’ you know, and [their peones] would go and get their livestock. That’s who the [qalas] were. …[The qalas] could make or break the village. In the first place, you had to respect them because most of them were our godparents. …But the godchildren had to serve their [qala] godparents for free, working in their fields, grazing their livestock… and the [comunera goddaughters] had to help around the house by cooking food, cleaning, washing the clothes. …The [comunero godchildren] were like slaves, and they got very little in return. [But it was not only the godchildren who served them]…For example, if a qala’s chacra needed

41 Ibid.

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work, [he could tell any comunero,] ‘Today you need to water so many yugadas of my field.’ And they could just gather as many people as needed, ‘Come, come, come,’ they would call people just to tell them, ‘You need to come work for me [free of charge,]’ claiming that it would be ‘for the good of the community.’…My parents told me all about that, and they were not the only ones. Other elders, my grandfather, my grandmother, I used to live with my grandfather and he would tell me, ‘It’s always been this way.’42

Clearly, Fulgencio appreciated the long history of conflict that had developed over the years between the vecinos and comuneros. He understood that in recent years, qalas such as Vicente Blanco had overstepped their boundaries as non-indigenous authorities, increasingly disregarding their end of the social pact by neglecting to fulfill comuneros’ cultural expectations regarding notions such as reciprocity and paternalism.

Young Fulgencio joined the guerrilla insurgency in large part to right these wrongs. To him, Shining Path’s local comité popular, for which he had served as a commander, represented a sort of comunero coup. “The first comité popular seized power from the qalas and the qalas returned to their homes to sleep,” he boasted, “From that moment forward all the [local] complaints that used to come to the qalas started coming to us.

...[We were] like the new authority. …Like the varayoq, the Governor, everything, everything.” Villagers certainly had reason to be suspicious of the new authority structure that the PCP-SL had thrust upon them. For one, the idea of bestowing political authority upon unmarried teenagers was completely foreign to comuneros. Additionally, they were appointed by Shining Path militants instead of their fellow villagers. Yet considering the alternative—the rule of abusive qalas—the PCP-SL’s local authority was a marked improvement. The comité popular had the sole authority to administer justice.

42 Ibid.

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Since most indigenous peasants believed that the penal systems of the state and traditional civil-religious hierarchy had failed them, the local authority structure of the

PCP-SL directly addressed that perceived crisis in the local administration of justice. “It was a novelty to be able to castigate those who misbehaved,” Fulgencio admitted, “…It was great, and everyone in the community applauded it. Gone were the thieves. Gone were the mujeriégos.”43 But as Fulgencio attested, the youths who headed up Chuschi’s comité popular did not act alone when deciding whom to punish and how. He and the other chuschino senderistas relied heavily on the wisdom and advice of their comunero neighbors, particularly elders and customary authorities:

We would call on the elder authorities, on the old leaders. …We would have meetings with the most notable [comuneros] and say, ‘This is what’s happening. What should we do? …What should we say?’ …The elders alone made the decisions, along with other people who were invited [to the meetings]: the notable elders of the village and the past authorities too. It was only after consulting them that we would act, the comité popular didn’t act alone. For example, there was this one señor, what was his name? He was a [former] authority. …We invited him [to our meetings] and asked him, ‘What should we do, tío [‘uncle,’ a term of endearment]?’ ...We would ask all of them for advice.44

In this sense, the PCP-SL’s local authority structure turned the existing power relationship on its head, legitimizing the rule of indigenous peasantry and subverting that of the qalas.

But not all qalas lost their authority. As Fulgencio testified, he and his chuschino comrades also invited Ernesto Jaime to the meetings of the comité popular. Fulgencio and his colleagues valued Jaime’s judgment and leadership during the early years of the

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid.

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insurgency: “He would also help us make decisions in the comité popular, [saying] ‘This

is what we should do, jóvenes.’”45 This comes as no surprise, since many villagers saw

Jaime as one of the few vecinos who had not overstepped his boundaries as a mestizo power holder. As discussed in earlier chapters, a large portion of the peasantry believed that Jaime had largely respected traditional codes of reciprocity and exhibited sound paternalistic leadership. He had even led his indigenous constituents into battle to defend communal integrity against neighboring Quispillaccta during the inter-community confrontations of the early 1960s. To them, his decision to divorce his qala wife and marry his indigenous servant exemplified his loyalty to the indigenous peasant community. For many villagers, Ernesto Jaime represented a legitimate mestizo authority, flawed, to be sure, but generally respectful of the implicit indigenous-mestizo social pact.

If villagers saw Ernesto Jaime as an ideal vecino power holder, then they saw

Humberto Ascarza as the worst kind. In chapter two, we discussed how the qala leader consolidated his economic and political capital within the community during the forty years preceding the outbreak of the Shining Path insurgency. So what became of Ascarza during the civil war? Did the radicals submit him to the same type of public humiliation and expulsion as the other qala authorities? No. Notwithstanding his long history of antagonism vis-à-vis indigenous chuschinos, Ascarza managed to escape Shining Path sanctions. The explanation that chuschinos gave for this is telling, for it underscores a core comunero value that we have introduced in the preceding chapters. Fulgencio and

45 Ibid.

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the other local senderistas were well aware of Ascarza’s record. “Ah, Humberto

Ascarza…” Fulgencio reflected when I raised the subject, “My parents told me he was a guy who ruled the town and that he was a guy who people used to have to obey.” By the time the insurgency broke out in Chuschi, however, Ascarza was well into his 80s.

Fulgencio could not justify submitting an elder to such harsh treatment: “I for one could see that he was already a señor of advanced age who barely had enough energy to get by.

I thought he was basically like any other anciano who had done some [bad] things in the past.” Other chuschinos must have agreed, for they never submitted Ascarza to the senderistas to be tried for his past crimes. As an elder—even one who had once been abusive—Ascarza deserved to be left alone. But being left alone could be punishment enough for an elder. As Alberto listened to Fulgencio describe Ascarza’s fate, he reminded his compoblano that the old man got what he deserved in the end. Because the rebels had run most of the other qalas out of town—including Ascarza’s own family— the elder patriarch was left to fend for himself throughout the remainder of the insurgency, having ruptured all ties with the indigenous peasantry:

He lived all alone, todo viejito [‘old,’ ‘an old man’], and didn’t have anyone to take care of him. He [was all alone] in his huge house…but eventually his children sold it and he was left with just a chozita [a little choza]…and every day he’d have to go todo viejito to work on his chacra, all alone. …It was pathetic. He didn’t have any food or anything, and that’s how he lived. And I tell you, even his own wife wouldn’t come back to him…and his children abandoned him, pucha mare [‘son of a gun’]! ...And the villagers just treated him like he was anyone else, they no longer respected him because things had changed quite a bit. …Now the power was in the hands of the children of comuneros…and the qalas were finished. …One day, [Ascarza] told me, ‘Alberto, I’ve got some cuyes [guinea pigs], let’s go eat them.’ ‘Sure, why not? Let’s go eat cuy,’ I said. And when we got [to Ascarza’s choza], there was nothing there but rats! The viejito didn’t realize [he had been eating rats]! He had been

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killing rats and eating them, having mistaken them for cuyes! …That viejito spent his dying days eating rats [murio comiendo rata]!46

Alberto’s recollection of Ascarza’s final days in Chuschi strikes at the heart of what the

PCP-SL rebellion represented to comuneros. Just as important as political ideology,

indigenous peasants saw the insurgency as an opportunity to invert race and power

relationships in Chuschi, so that even when qalas such as Ascarza escaped physical

punishment due to their advanced age, they still could not escape social justice, being forced to experience a life without privilege.

To indigenous chuschinos, then, the Shining Path insurgency was as much about race and ethnicity as it was about power and class. Whereas Shining Path leaders emphasized class conflict, comuneros saw the insurgency as an opportunity to turn the racial hierarchy on its head. By stripping them naked in front of all the villagers, the rebels were essentially stripping them of their principle status markers—their urban dress—thus rendering them symbolically equal to the indigenous poor. By flogging the vecinos, the oppressed became the oppressor, and the oppressor the oppressed. This act also illustrated that the qalas’ fair skin could crack and bleed just like an indígena’s. The public expulsion of the mestizo power holders from the community represented the final act of reconquest, of the comuneros recapturing their political autonomy. Because this was the principle objective of these tribunals for indigenous chuschinos, they saw no

need to insist on killing the qalas during the initial phase of violence—the objective was

racial reconquest and displacement, not genocide. Even so, indigenous peasants focused

on the individual vecinos whom they believed had violated the culturally defined social

46 Field notes, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

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pact. Those who had generally respected this pact were not targeted. This was one

reason that chuschino senderistas allowed mestizos like Ernesto Jaime to not only escape public castigation and expulsion during the initial phase of the insurgency, but to influence their decision making as well. In effect, chuschinos rewarded Jaime for his paternalistic loyalty to the community and remembered his leadership in the epic battle

against rival Quispillaccta. At the same time, they remembered the quispillacctinos who

had fought against them during those conflicts.

Inter-community Conflict

“Eucalyptus, cedar, molle, and alder trees grow throughout its countryside, and in the center of its valley you will find Chuschi and Quispillaqta [sic], villages divided by a stream and united by a bridge; villages inhabited by two rival, antagonistic, native, and agricultural comuneros. The rivalry is very old and it has its origins in the ownership of communal lands in the punas. Both communities say that the little hill that divides their pastures belongs to them. What is certain is that they will never be able to determine its real boundaries. In the year 1960, there was an armed clash between the two bands and some comuneros died.-----Antonio Díaz Martínez.47

For those who are not familiar, the man who wrote these words was known as

Shining Path’s “third-in-command” during the 1980s, Behind Guzmán and Osmán

Morote. He recorded this observation in a smalltime ethnography that he wrote in 1969,

which means that at the time of the ILA on 17 May 1980, Shining Path leaders were well

aware of the historic rivalry between Chuschi and Quispillaccta. It would therefore not

be out of the question to consider the possibility that senderista leaders chose the location

of Chuschi for the ILA not because they felt it represented a community of politicized

47 Antonio Díaz Martínez, Hambre y esperanza (Lima: Mosca Azul Editores, 1985 [1969]), 100.

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rural proletariats, but because they hoped to channel inter-village hostilities into the

violence of the armed struggle. The reverse was also true, that is, that indigenous

chuschinos and quispillacctinos manipulated the violence of the civil war to revisit the

historic inter-village feud.

At least that was what Amancio Rejas’s wife, Dámasa Machaca, believed.

Machaca had been washing wool in a ravine in the Quispillaccta barrio of Tuco in

September 1983 when she heard the voice of her daughter, Emilia, calling her from off in the distance. When she got to her daughter’s house, she noticed that the young woman was dressed for mourning. Dámasa paid this no mind, grabbed her own manta and asked

where they were headed. “Into town,” was Emilia’s only response as they made their

way to the center of Quispillaccta. Now, Dámasa Machaca knew her husband well. He

was, as she put it, a “strong character” who commonly got into arguments and fights

when he drank—and he drank a lot. He was also no stranger to cattle rustling and

adultery. As she made her way into the village, Dámasa could only imagine what trouble

he had gotten himself into this time: “I thought that my husband had gotten into a fight

with someone, like he always did when he drank.” On the way there, they caught up with

Emilia’s husband, amidst stares and whispers of local on-lookers. “There goes the family of the deceased,” villagers commented as the three walked by. Dámasa scarcely had time to register this when her son-in-law turned and prepared her for the worst: “Mama,

you’re not going to cry, you’re not going to blame anyone, we will only cry in silence.”

It was only then that the thought crossed her mind that her husband might be dead. When

she met up with the varayoqs in the Quispillaccta plaza, they informed her that her son

had been killed, too. Dámasa suspected that the chuschinos had put the Shining Path

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militants up to killing Amancio and son. After the “popular trial,” Dámasa even heard rumors that the senderistas were looking to kill her, her daughter, and son-in-law. “[W]e have to kill that dog’s entire family,” she would overhear them say.48

As Isbell notes, the first public executions in Chuschi took place in the village’s main square in August 1981 when eight hooded senderistas, enjoying “almost universal” support from the chuschino villagers, serenely executed two alleged cattle rustlers; both of the victims were from Quispillaccta. Assassinations of quispillacctinos in Chuschi would be the norm over the next two years. Chuschina Balbina Conde told the Peruvian

Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR) that the early targets of Sendero violence in

Chuschi were “generally from the neighboring village.” She witnessed one of these executions firsthand: “I’ve seen how they covered one [quispillacctino] with a newspaper like he was a dog, they took him from the village of Quispillaccta and they killed him in

Chuschi, on the paper they wrote his [first and last] names, his family with much fear had to come get them [sic].”49

In the prologue to the second edition of her acclaimed study on Chuschi, To

Defend Ourselves, Isbell hypothesizes that inter-village hostilities conditioned peasant responses to Shining Path in Chuschi District. She writes: “It is likely that old land boundary conflicts between the two villages [of Chuschi and Quispillaccta] are being brought into play during the current upheavals of violence. …I think that it is very possible that the massive arrests of Quispillaqtinos [sic] on May 21, 1983 was motivated

48 ADP, Testimonio 200158.

49 Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 83; ADP, Testimonio 100883.

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by accusations lodged by Chuschinos as a means of attacking their old enemies.”50 In order to prove this, however, one must look beyond the immediate civil war years to understand the nature of these historically rooted conflicts and demonstrate the degree to which they shaped collective consciousness at the time of the insurgency. Having done

this in the previous chapter, we may now draw direct connections between the inter-

community conflict and the violence of the Shining Path insurgency, thus providing

concrete historical evidence for what has until now been a matter of academic

speculation.

Collective memory about this inter-community conflict certainly reached young

senderistas like Fulgencio. When asked if back then he had been aware of the previous

conflicts with Quispillaccta, the chuschino affirmed, “Of course. …Not just my parents,

but your [sic] grandpa, your uncle, everyone, everyone told you the history [of the

conflict]. …Everyone knew about it. Everyone. Everyone knew the whole history: how

it happened; who attacked whom; who led; who was who; [who was] on horseback; who

had slings; who had guns. …Even the little kids [knew]. …It was like playing an

instrument; everyone had to learn it.” Nor did local youths perceive this as some distant

tension from their parents’ generation. Instead, their very identity as chuschinos or

quispillacctinos hinged on their perpetuation of the struggle. Fulgencio could hardly

keep from smiling as he reminisced about the confrontations between chuschino and

quispillacctino youths during his adolescence:

There were all types of conflicts [in school]—fights. Look, for example, the jóvenes [from the rival villages] would come to blows [bronca] over

50 Isbell, To Defend Ourselves, viii.

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any little thing. They were always fighting, always fighting. …For example, look, if there was a party and a chuschino and quispillacctino were there, they’d break out in a fight, carajo! ...Or when playing soccer [chuschino versus quispillacctino youths] it was a battle to the death, you know, pan, pan, pan! And the teachers couldn’t do a thing about it.51

Fulgencio chuckled as he prepared his next anecdote:

Look, there was this river where a group of us [chuschino boys would go swim]. Chuschi River. And since I was always the leader I had a lot of friends from school and so we would go to…just beyond the Chuschi River…where there’s this lagoon…and we’d go swimming there…and if we came across a quispillacctino we’d beat the shit out of him [le sacábamos la mierda]. We wouldn’t let him swim there. …Or we’d make the quispillacctinos have to pay [money] to be able to swim there, you know? ...And we would go fishing there, too. …We owned [that lagoon]. They [quispillacctinos] didn’t see the light of day there. Sure, they’d make their little pools in it but we’d go over and destroy them really fast. We’d destroy them because we didn’t want them making their own pools. They had to [ask permission to swim] with us. They had to obey us.52

As Fulgencio’s account reveals, young would-be senderistas were not only aware of the

historical rivalry between Chuschi and Quispillaccta, but they deliberately and

proactively exacerbated it.

It is therefore reasonable to conclude that chuschinos used the Shining Path

insurgency as a pretext for revisiting this conflict. A look at the early targets of Shining

Path violence certainly seems to confirm this hypothesis. We recall from the preceding chapter that in addition to all his problems in his own village, quispillacctino Teobaldo

Achallma had gotten into trouble with the neighboring village in 1975 when he and a friend were arrested for stealing five bulls from the punas above Chuschi. Similarly,

Asunción Llalli had his share of enemies in Chuschi. In the previous chapter, we learned

51 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

52 Ibid.

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that in 1981, Llalli had teamed up with brothers Martin and Faustino Mendieta to rustle

livestock from Chuschi in retaliation for the slaying of the brothers’ father by chuschinos more than twenty years earlier. Thus, while in the opening section of this chapter we discussed the reasons why quispillacctinos may have wanted to see Rejas, Achallma, and

Llalli submitted to the PCP-SL’s radical justice, here we are presented with reasons why chuschinos may have been invested in the process. Whereas quispillacctinos probably

saw the elimination of these local misfits as a means to reestablish public order within the

village, chuschinos saw Sendero’s “popular trials” as an opportunity to settle scores that

still lingered from previous episodes in the long inter-village conflict.

Of course, the quispillacctinos used the insurgency to their advantage too, as

Gregorio Cayllahua’s Truth Commission testimony reveals. Gregorio’s father, Mariano,

was an elder from Quispillaccta who had dared to propose a resolution to end the

decades-long conflict between his village and Chuschi. Mariano had a vested interest in

this outcome, as his wife was chuchina. As Gregorio testified, Mariano’s staunch

defense of his compoblanos’ adversaries came back to haunt him during the insurgency:

“[Y]ou know that…Quispillaccta and Chuschi had a problem over land, and [my Dad]

was the guy who would always talk in favor of Chuschi. [He did this] [s]o that there

would be respect between those [from] Quispillaccta [and Chuschi]. That’s why some

were envious of him.” Quispillacctinos, accompanied by a column of senderistas, went

into Chuschi looking for Gregorio’s father: “That’s when my uncle…came over [from

Quispillaccta] saying, ‘come forward Mariano Cayllahua, come forward Mariano

Cayllahua…hoping to compromise him since he was a leader who spoke in favor of

Chuschi. My Dad is from Quispillaccta. That’s why they said ‘Mariano Cayllahua is

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talking about [resolving] land [disputes] again, that’s why they wanted to compromise

him.” Mariano and his son were tending to their chacra when they learned that the

quispillacctinos and the guerrillas had entered Chuschi looking for him. According to

Gregorio, the chuschinos came to their defense, chasing out the invaders. Young

Gregorio, who was only thirteen at the time, gave chase as well, more “out of curiosity”

than anything else, until the guerrillas started firing at their pursuers: “[T]hey started after us with bullets and that’s when I escaped.” Even with their weapons, however, the senderistas were no match for the chuschino horde, which this time managed to dispel the intruders.53

Other quispillacctinos commented on ways that they used the insurgency against

the chuschinos. A comunero from Quispillaccta told Sánchez Villagómez, “One time

there was a meeting in the barrio of Llactahuran and [the senderistas] told us,

‘[C]ompañeros, tonight we will settle scores with the chuschinos, we will enter where the

chuschinos are, because the chuschinos are bad!’ And the people responded, ‘Alright

then, let’s go!’ How could we say, ‘no compañeros’[comrades]? The cumpas

[senderistas] would have killed us.”54 This last statement is worthy of scrutiny. Notice

that the quispillacctino exculpated himself and his compoblanos by indicating that they obliged out of fear. Indeed, Sánchez Villagómez’s informants from both sides of the

Chuschi River claimed that most of these violent actions occurred under duress and against their will. However, it is important to note that many of these incidents took place in the midst of or immediately following the 1981 litigation between the two

53 ADP, Testimonio 200801.

54 Quoted in Sánchez Villagómez, Pensar los senderos, 137.

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communities. Given the long, bloody history of inter-community conflict described

above, we should question such exculpatory testimonies. While some may indeed have

been fearful of senderista reprisals, it would not be incongruous with the pre-insurgency

record to conclude that some villagers rendered the militants genuine support in the initial

years of the insurgency. As Kimberly Theidon points out, claiming that they had done so

against their will or their better senses may have served more as a therapeutic strategy to

help clear consciences and achieve reconciliation in the wake of a violent civil war.55

Let us now return to the first episode of the Peruvian insurgency—the burning of ballot boxes in Chuschi on 17 May 1980. Even here we find, thanks to Gorriti’s investigative journalism, that while two of the guerrillas involved in the assault were not from the region, at least two of them were in fact from Quispillaccta.56 These were

youths who would have been familiar with—and possibly have experienced firsthand—

the mistreatment and racial slurs directed toward them by chuschinos at the local high

school. Gregorio Cayllahua indicated as much in his Truth Commission testimony:

“There were more terrorists in the zone of Quispillaccta, they were united with them.

That’s why they entered Chuschi, they wanted to burn down the…[C]onsejo[.]”57 This

gives us reason to speculate that even the very first episode of the Shining Path

insurgency in Peru, which we have taken to signify the Initiation of the Armed Struggle

55 Kimberly Theidon, “Tramatic States: Violence and Reconciliation in Peru,” (Ph.D. diss., in Medical Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 2002), 212-14.

56 Gorriti, The Shining Path, 17.

57 ADP, Testimonio 200801. Cayllahua went on to say that the event referred to took place during the elections which led to the inauguration of Alan García, which would have placed it in 1985 and not on 17 May 1980. However, the reference to the burning of the Consejo is a direct reference to the ILA, which means that Cayllahua may simply have confused his dates.

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against the Peruvian state, may have been fueled as much by young quispillacctinos’ desire to ignite the flames of communist revolution as it was by their desire to ignite the shingles of their rivals’ administrative center. The significance of this act would not have been lost on local comuneros, serving as a political parallel to the burning of chuschino religious centers in years past. All this leads us to the conclusion that in Chuschi the

“river of blood” did not only lead to a classless society. It also led, quite literally, to

Quispillaccta.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

This analysis of the Shining Path insurgency has emphasized variation: variation between the ideology of Shining Path leaders and the locally, historically, and culturally- grounded motivations that indigenous peasants had for supporting the rebellion; variation between the village outsiders and insiders who joined the insurgency; variation among indigenous comuneros in their reasons for backing the rebels; and variation in the degrees of support that comuneros rendered to the insurgents. Through all of this variation we have found a constant: a cry for justice and order. Whereas Abimael Guzmán and other

Shining Path leaders demanded justice against a semi-feudal, semi-colonial social structure, an undemocratic, reactionary nation-state, and capitalist imperialism—each of which had brought disorder on a macro level—comuneros in Chuschi sought justice against moral deviants, mestizo power holders, and longtime adversaries who had been disrupting public order at the local level. Although the PCP-SL offered an unfamiliar system of authority and justice, and even though in the long run the radical violence of the civil war only heightened the sense of disorder in peasant communities, chuschinos

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and quispillacctinos initially concluded that the potential benefits of this system outweighed the potential costs. Indigenous campesinos were willing to experiment with this new system so long as it redressed these local concerns.

This is not to say that comuneros were only conditioned by local experiences or that they shared none of the political concerns of PCP-SL leaders. One indicator that they may have embraced party ideology is that a handful of chuschino militants actually operated outside the district. Quispillacctino José Rejas confessed to the Truth

Commission that in early 1983 that his seventeen-year-old son and six other local adolescents joined a larger senderista battalion on its way to an expedition in another province. Rejas said that he had only learned of what took place next because five of the youths managed to escape the incursion and report what had happened. The teenagers told Rejas that they had been hiding out in a large house, “possibly the hacienda house,” when a military helicopter approached overhead. Several soldiers descended from the chopper, engaging the quispillacctino militants. Two of the boys, Rejas’s son included, did not make it out alive.58

Little did Rejas know that the soldiers had been getting assistance from the local

comuneros. One of those comuneros, an indigenous teenager named Narciso, later told

the Truth Commission his side of the story. He said that there were three helicopters in

all, representing police and Marine forces, and that the male villagers had joined them in

the hunt for the senderistas. Together, the counterinsurgency forces and the villagers

surrounded the house where the rebels were hiding. One of the soldiers approached the

58 ADP, Testimonio 200818.

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door and began firing inside to stir the rebels. Rather than surrender, the rebels shouted

back in Quechua, taunting their pursuers: “qatimuwachkankikuray qamuya! Yawarnikipi

tusuyta munaspaykiqa [‘You missed us! Come and get it if you want to dance in your own blood]!” According to Narciso, the soldiers fired on the house again, but the

senderistas did not budge. Finally, one of the soldiers hurled a grenade inside the house.

After it exploded, the rebels yelled back: “sikiki toqyaychkaq kaqllata mamchachikamuchkanki, kanachallanmi tuylluykiwampas estatakakakusaqku, qapiylla qapirusaykikuqa [‘Your explosion couldn’t scare us less if it came from your butt. Now we’re going to clobber your bones—here we come]!” By Narciso’s estimate, roughly twenty senderista men and women then came running out of the house with their guns blazing. A firefight ensued, and the attackers managed to capture and kill at least one of the rebels. Narciso said he later learned that the fallen senderista was from Chuschi

District, which means that there is good chance that it was José Rejas’s son.59

This episode is significant for two reasons. First, it shows us that young chuschinos and quispillacctinos did not only join the insurgency to settle local scores.

The fact that the six quispillacctinos were willing to engage in battle in a distant location, together with the language that they or members of their column used to taunt their attackers, suggests they shared Shining Path’s political discourse about “the blood quota” and the need to spread the “people’s war.” This incident is doubly revealing, for it also shows that some indigenous peasants were willing to engage in armed combat against the guerrillas. Why, then, did Quechua-speaking highlanders such as the ones mentioned

59 ADP, Testimonio 201700.

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here violently reject Shining Path? The answer to this question will become abundantly

clear in the following chapter, for it took place in Huaychao, and the testimony came

from Narciso Huamán, the same huaychaino who shared his tales of the “hacendado- kings” with Julián and me in chapter two. In what follows, we will discuss the reasons why indigenous peasants in Huaychao and elsewhere felt compelled to align themselves with state security forces and violently resist the guerrillas as they did in this skirmish with the quispillacctino senderistas.

Chapter Five: Defending the Mountaintop

Initial Peasant Resistance to Shining Path

On Saturday morning, 22 January 1983, a group of huaychainos walked into the

Jefatura de Línea (Civil Guard station) in Huanta City. They had made the long trek through a convoluted landscape of ravines, crags, and plains from their high Andes village. It had been two and a half years since Sendero Luminoso launched its revolution in Chuschi, and by now Huanta police had certainly seen their share of complaints from peasants regarding missing and murdered persons. But the unique thing about the huaychainos’ claim was that they were claiming to have done the killing: they had

lynched seven senderistas.1

The following morning, a delighted President Fernando Belaúnde Terry held a

press conference to discuss the lynching which had taken place in Huaychao:

The actions of the security forces…are rising these days, in patriotic and voluntary form, [through] the plausible and civic collaboration of the peasant communities. …Recently, one of these communities [Huaychao] confronted and defeated a terrorist attempt to intimidate it; this is an example of what is happening in Ayacucho. …Unarmed, [the huaychainos] bravely took on [the senderistas] and cast them out. Through this means I hope that tranquility will be restored and that the presence and bravery of these towns is sufficient…to end the terrorism.2

1 Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-24.

2 “Días antes del linchamiento Belaúnde alentó orgía de sangre,” El Diario, 1 February 1983.

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Shortly thereafter, General Roberto Noel Moral, who had only recently assumed

command over the counterinsurgency effort in the region, offered similar words of praise:

“[I]n [the Iquichano] zone they now sing the national anthem, they raise the Peruvian flag

and there are more and more demands for religious services.”3 From the moment they

got word of the Huaychao lynching, then, Peruvian officials applauded the counter-

rebellion as an act of patriotism on the part of indigenous ayacuchanos; a sort of

nationalist defense of the Peruvian state. The fact that rondas campesinas proliferated

throughout Ayacucho after the President issued this “call to arms” solidified the state’s

position.

CONVENTIONAL EXPLANATIONS OF THE PEASANT COUNTER-REBELLION

Many dismissed the state’s version of the counter-rebellion as nothing more than a shameless attempt to foment nationalism and popular support for the counterinsurgency. Eventually, though, prominent Peruvian scholars began suggesting that, propaganda aside, it was not far-fetched to think of indigenous peasants as nationalists. Nelson Manrique, for example, has pointed out that peasants from Junín, a department known for its defense of the Peruvian republic during late-nineteenth century

War of the Pacific, also tended to join the state’s counterinsurgency effort one hundred years later.4 Similarly, Carlos Iván Degregori and Jaime Urrutia have posited that

highlanders from Iquichano villages such as Huaychao were more inclined to support the

Peruvian state during the Shining Path rebellion due to lingering collective memories

3 Javier Mújica, “Los verdaderos culpables,” El Diario, 3 February 1983.

4 Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra,” 219.

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about the rewards they reaped following their alliance with the Spanish regime during the

colonial period.5 Such historically-minded arguments lent further credence to the

interpretation of the rondas campesinas as Peruvian “nationalists” or “loyalists.”

Others had trouble believing that indigenous peasants would ever willingly risk

their lives defending a nation-state which historically had offered them so little. Among

the most vocal critics of this theory was acclaimed Peruvian anthropologist Rodrigo

Montoya. For Montoya, this type of peasant violence directed towards “outsiders” broke

with centuries of indigenous campesino behavior. Historically, Montoya maintained,

Andean peasants tended to engage in collective violence: (1) against enemies well known

to the community—landowners, cattle rustlers, etc.—not against outsiders; (2) after these

local enemies had submitted the peasantry to excessive exploitation and abuse; (3) as a

last resort, after they had exhausted all other avenues for achieving justice through state

bureaucracy; and (4) after reaching a collective agreement as a community. “The events

of Uchuraccay,” and by extension, Huaychao, “have nothing in common with the actual

tradition of Andean violence in Peru,” Montoya argued.6 As he wrote following the

massacre of Uchuraccay, “All attempts to make reference to ritual violence or peasant

justice as a means of attributing the responsibility of the [Uchuraccay and Huaychao]

massacre[s] to the peasants deform historical truth. …If in centuries of history, peasants

have never massacred strangers on their own, then one would have to explain why and under what specific conditions the peasants carried out the [Uchuraccay and Huaychao]

5 Carlos Iván Degregori and Jaime Urrutia, “Reflexiones sobre ocho muertes peruanas,” El Diario, 6 February 1983.

6 Rodrigo Montoya, “Otra pista para entender lo que pasó en Uchuraccay,” La República, 21 January 1984. The particularities of the Uchuraccay massacre are discussed below.

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massacre[s] alone.”7 Even as word spread about the February 1983 rondero mobilization

in Huancasancos, Montoya remained skeptical, asserting, “There are many reasons to

doubt the official versions, in a country where lying is one of the conditions for

exercising power.”8

Montoya suspected that the counterinsurgency ronderos had not acted alone. If

not indigenous peasants, than who orchestrated the assaults? Montoya had a theory: that

the counterinsurgency police, the sinchis, had played a greater role in the attack than the

Peruvian government was willing to concede. Montoya was equally critical of the results of a government-sponsored Investigative Commission that chose not to pursue this hypothesis in its official report. This was a curious omission indeed, given that they had been told by at least one local that members of the armed forces had instructed them to

“Defend yourselves and kill [the senderistas].”9 He speculated that this command from

the armed forces to the peasantry could have easily been accompanied by another: “If you

do it, nothing will happen to you, we will protect you.” After all, Montoya mused, “it

would have been in the best interest of at least a part of the Armed Forces to obtain the

support of the iquichanos against the senderistas[.]”10 Other of Montoya’s colleagues

were equally skeptical of the role of the Peruvian state and security forces in the attacks, as evidenced in the following excerpt from columnist Javier Mújica: “[J]ust as with the dead senderistas in the community of Huaychao, our eight colleagues who died in

7 Rodrigo Montoya, “Uchuraccay: Dos preguntas esenciales,” La República, 14 February1983.

8 Rodrigo Montoya, “Guerra civil en Ayacucho?” La República, 23 April 1983. The particularities of the Huancasancos counter-rebellion are discussed below.

9 Rodrigo Montoya, “Otra pista,” 21 January 1984.

10 Ibid.

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Uchuraccay, were killed because of the actions of a human group—the peasants—which

acted under the direct and punishable instigation of another human group under the

direction and command of general Roberto Noel Moral: los sinchis.”11

Recent works by scholars such as Degregori, Del Pino, Coronel, Starn, and

Fumerton have asserted that such an approach to indigenous peasants’ role in the counter-

rebellion strips them of their historical agency.12 These academics point out that in many

cases counter-insurgency patrols were grassroots efforts. Nevertheless, in lauding the

actions of counterinsurgency ronderos (militiamen), this scholarship can at times ignore

Van Young’s warning against the “apotheosis of agency.”13 As the title of his work,

“From Victims to Heroes,” implies, Fumerton’s rondero comes across as a sort of righteous defender of his community. In a similar vein, Degregori maintains that indigenous peasants rejected Shining Path’s excessive use of violence because it violated a noble Andean ethic of “punish but don’t kill.”14

This chapter contributes to existing debates about the causes for the peasant

counter-rebellion by highlighting the effect that local histories and indigenous cultural understandings had on Andean campesinos’ decisions to join the counterinsurgency. On the one hand, I consider Montoya’s plea for the establishment of historical and cultural

precedent by demonstrating that peasants’ decision to resist Shining Path was consistent

11 Javier Mújica, “Los verdaderos culpables,” 3 February 1983.

12 See Degregori, et al., eds., Las rondas campesinas; Orin Starn, ed. Hablan los ronderos: La búsqueda por la paz en los Andes (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1993); Orin Starn, “Villagers at Arms” (1997 and 1998); Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra”; Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes.

13 Van Young, “The New Cultural History,” 243.

14 Carlos Iván Degregori, “Harvesting Storms,” 137.

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with the cultural and political histories outlined in previous chapters. On the other hand, it agrees with Degregori, Del Pino, Starn, and Fumerton that regardless of whether or not

Peruvian security forces ordered them to do so, the ultimate decision to violently resist

Shining Path lay with the peasants themselves.

I begin with an in-depth description of the counter-rebellion in Huaychao. Next, I explore the motivations for the counterinsurgency in Huaychao and the Iquichano highlands in which it lay. Then, I discuss the spread of the peasant militias across the

Peruvian countryside. Finally, I illustrate that the motivations behind indigenous peasants’ violent rejection of Shining Path in other parts of the Peruvian Andes paralleled those that were in play in Huaychao. In paying attention to lived experiences and understandings on the ground, this chapter supports Kimberly Theidon’s argument that

peasants began taking up arms against the rebels once it appeared to them that the PCP-

SL had become a cultural threat to their communities.15 When and where this resistance

solidified varied from community to community, depending on how long it took for the

guerrillas to present this cultural threat locally. While nationalism, self-defense, and

coercion were also important factors, it is worth emphasizing that the guerrillas

experienced the stiffest resistance once their local behavior and propositions began to

challenge indigenous peasants’ preconceived notions regarding class, race, gender,

authority, and justice. This cultural threat was real enough for some peasants to defend to

the death the status quo. As one Peruvian journalist astutely observed: “Ayacuchan

communities have started saying ‘no’ to the interference with the destiny of their lives;

15 Kimberly Theidon, “Terror’s Talk: Fieldwork and War,” Dialectical Anthropology 26 (2001): 19-35.

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‘no’ to forced recruitments; ‘no’ to the closing of fairs and ‘no’ to the justice of those

whom [the rebels] consider ‘traitors and snitches.’”16

HUAYCHAO AND THE PCP-SL: FIRST ENCOUNTERS

Sendero had not entered Huaychao before 1983. The rebels had been rumored to

be in the Iquichano highlands, however. Thus, the image that huaychainos had of the

guerrillas was incomplete, fleeting, and inaccurate. Nevertheless, these images served to

shape collective consciousness in the village to the effect that when the rebels did finally

breach the community borders in January 1983, many villagers had already made up their

minds about Sendero.

Before 1983, huaychainos had relied on local and regional trade networks for

news regarding the rebels. Tayta Isidro, who served as community scribe at the time,

recalled:

Everything was fine here, we would nominate the [village] President, we would eat our livestock, we worked peacefully, lived in our houses, during that period harvest was good and there weren’t any illnesses when Sendero appeared. As we know, Sendero didn’t appear [first] in this town, but rather from the cities, the fairs. …But in this town people were already talking. Also, the name Sendero was something else: ‘guerrilla.’ We didn’t know what that was, but people said that they would come around and talk bad about the government.17

Clearly, the former community scribe was trying to evoke a “golden age” that never

existed in pre-insurgency Huaychao. Nostalgia aside, this statement illustrates villagers’

lack of clarity regarding the guerrillas and their agenda.

16 Raúl González, “¿Qué pasa con Sendero Luminoso?,” Quehacer 29 (June 1984): 36.

17 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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Mama Juana recalled being just as confused when she learned of the rebels

through a conversation with three salt merchants from Cachi who had been passing

through town on their horses and mules. Mama Juana engaged in trueque (barter) with

the merchants, providing them with chuño (a freeze-dried potato) in exchange for some

salt and seeds. They informed her of the strangers who were making their way through

the region. “Your town is calm,” they said, “but in other areas things aren’t so good,

because these strangers are coming and if we accept them it’s bad for us, and if we reject

them it’s bad for us.” They told her that these strangers carried knives and had jagged

fangs. Mama Juana sat chewing her coca leaf, clearly concerned with what she had just

been told. Based on this description, mama Juana did not know whether the senderistas

were people, beasts, or both. The merchants, no doubt noticing her discomfort, tried to

reassure her, “It’s probably their [the senderistas] last visit [to these parts] and we may not even see them.”18

This did not prove to be so. By late-1982, Sendero had made its presence known

throughout the Iquichano highlands. As they would tell journalist Gustavo Gorriti

immediately following the massacre of the seven Shining Path insurgents, huaychainos

had already heard that Shining Path had been recruiting adolescents and children into its

military ranks. They had also heard rumors that the senderistas were compelling

peasants to supply them with food and domestic animals, valued commodities in the

zone.19 Tayta Ciprián, a varayoq at the time, remembered hearing about Shining Path at

the regional market in Pachanga: “People would say, ‘the guerrillas attacked this and

18 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

19 Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4.

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that’…or, ‘the guerrillas burned a tractor.’ …We heard people say, ‘the terrucos

[terrorists] are coming and [the poor] will be equal to the rich.’”20

Narciso Huamán, an adolescent in late-1982, claimed to have had several chance encounters with groups of guerrillas while attending the weekly market in Upiaccpampa.

On one occasion, the rebels explained to peasants in attendance that they were

“compañeros” who had come to rescue the area’s impoverished masses: “We are going to fight against [President] Belaunde’s government, we want the best for the poor people, for we are poor [too] and we will fight for the poor, that’s why we need to unite and fight to take power.” On another occasion, the guerrillas proclaimed, “The rich men, the villagers who are in favor of the government, the authorities such as Lieutenant

Governor, Varayoq, we will remove and finish them all off.” The rebels then asked the locals if they had come across any qarachakis (military soldiers), to which nobody responded. Determined to make their point, the insurgents told the peasants “that if at any moment the soldiers appeared, the villagers would all have to defend themselves, with rocks and huaraca and that the senderistas would come from the other side and begin to defend them with their guns[.]”21

Before long, PCP-SL cadres began putting their words into action. One day, compañeros at the Upiaccpampa fair dragged a man out and stood him in front of the crowd. They claimed that he had “talked bad about the party.” Since this was his first offense, he was only whipped. On a later occasion, however, the guerrillas brought the same man before the crowd, alleging that he had once again spoken ill of the party.

20 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

21 ADP, Testimonio 201700.

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While we do not know the details or method of his punishment, we do know that he did not survive it to test his fate a third time.22

Rumors also circulated that the rebels had threatened and even attacked local power holders. In late 1982, for example, rebels killed two varayoqs in nearby

Culluchaca.23 It did not take long for news of such events to reach Huaychao. Mama

Alejandra explained: “We had heard that the terrorists were walking around at night and killing authorities and rich folks. …A while later, people started talking about how they had appeared in [the Iquichano communities of] Iquicha, Carhuahurán and Uchuraccay.

People told us, ‘they walk around with knives and guns, they say they will kill us,’ and we wondered, ‘Do they have horns and tails or something?’ We decided that they must be [real] people and that if we all prayed we could probably figure it out.”24

Equipped with these ephemeral sketches of Shining Path, huaychainos began

talking amongst themselves and with peasants from other Iquichano hamlets about how

they would react to the rebels should they reach the community. Anthropologist José

Coronel confirms that peasants from Culluchaca held meetings in Huaychao between

November 1982 and January 1983 in which they informed their Iquichano neighbors of

the assassinations of their varayoqs; they also informed villagers from Uchuraccay and

Ccarhuarurán.25 Santos Quispe, an influential elder and authority whom one huaychaino

referred to as “the owner of the village,” gathered the villagers to discuss their options.

22 Ibid.

23 Coronel, “Violencia política,” 71.

24 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

25 Coronel, “Violencia política,” 71.

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Referring to the new system of justice and authority that the militants had been rumored

to propose in the region, he told villagers “that there is a new law coming [to town], it doesn’t suit us, I don’t think it will suit us.” Of course, Quispe and the other village elders and authorities had a particular interest in defending existing village structures, for

they were the people who most profited from them. One villager explained : “[T]he

elders did not want [to let Sendero take over]. Santos Quispe was not even literate, he

was just a guy who was a hot shot [se creía el más]. …In those days [the elders] decided

who would be the local authority, and if there was nobody else, they assumed the role,

because whenever they didn’t want someone [in power] they would say: ‘He’s just a

yerno [in-law] and those guys always mislead the village.”26 The emphasis on the term

“yerno” was intended to distinguish between native, “autochthonous” (e.g., legitimate)

huaychainos and those who only came into the village through inter-marriage. In this

case, the term was used to delegitimize the authority and question the loyalty of

exogenous kin while cementing that of village elders who had spent their entire life in the

hamlet. But village elders were not the only people in the community interested in

preserving this cultural value of seniority. Indeed, younger authorities and comuneros

also deferred to the authority of village elders. Tayta Isidro recollected, “There were men

from [the annex of] Macabamba who were even older than us, and they were certainly

talking about not accepting [Sendero].” Heeding the advice of elderly men, peasants

from Huaychao-Macabamba determined to resist Sendero.27 Apparently, authorities from

26 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

27 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006); Interview with Alejandra Ccente; Huaychao, (6 February 2006); Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

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neighboring Uchuraccay had reached the same conclusion, and they invited

representatives from Huaychao and other Iquichano communities to discuss how they

would go about resisting the guerrillas.28

The Huaychao-Macabamba Lynching

On 21 January 1983, the rebels provided huaychainos with an opportunity to

demonstrate their position. That morning, eight armed guerrillas—seven men and one

woman—descended upon the community and its annex of Macabamba, chanting

revolutionary slogans and waving the red communist flag. Village authorities and

comuneros came out to greet the militants with loud cheers of support, repeating after the

militants: “Long live the armed struggle and Gonzalo!” The leftists announced: “We are

looking [to punish] the rich and the hacendados.” Villagers kindly escorted them into

their homes for some refreshments before inviting them into their despacho.29

Roughly forty men, women, and children gathered in the dirt-floored assembly

room, at which point the authorities gave the guerrillas the floor. The rebels addressed the locals as “compañeros” and told them about their “glorious” socialist-communist

revolution and of the “evils” of the reactionary government. Claiming to be as infinite in

number as the sand in the river, the rebels asserted, “We [the masses] are many, we will

fight with our might, there will be arms, young and old will fight against the

government.” They promised not to stop fighting until they had done away with the rich

28 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 131.

29 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 9, 2006); Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4; Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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and the hacendados: “We will be equal with the rich; we will redistribute all their possessions, including livestock.” They also claimed to be against the state. As

President Fortunato recalled, “They told us, ‘We are going to fight against the military, against the government, police, hacendados and there will be no more thieves, brujos, or fathers who leave their children, and we will begin to fight.’”30

The rebels then urged the villagers to pledge their allegiance to the communist- socialist revolution. A few villagers objected, asking the Maoists to leave and insisting that Huaychao would never support them. Village authorities began arguing with the rebels, telling them that they were the government and therefore would not support any revolution that sought to topple it. One of the compañeros turned to the teniente gobernador and retorted, “You must be the one in charge here [tú eres el que mucho habla]; when we return next time you will not escape.” Neither the authorities nor the comuneros seemed intimidated by this threat, and they continued to refute whatever the compañeros proposed, reminding them “that [the rebels] were in their [the huaychainos’] community and therefore had no right to offend them.” Others told the militants:

“You’re just a damn thief [sic]; you’re not the real law [no eres una buena ley]!” At this point, one of the senderistas asked one last time, “Are you with us or not?” When nobody responded in the affirmative, the rebels huddled together to contemplate their next move.31

30 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán. Huaychao, (5 February 2006); Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9June 2006); ADP, Testimonio 201700; Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006); Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006); Interview with Santos Huaylla, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

31Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao, (5 February 2006); Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006);

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Villagers took advantage of this break in the debate to strategize their own course

of action. After a hurried discussion, the huaychainos reached a whispered agreement:

“Let’s call them over here and take advantage of them before they try to kill us.” The

peasants beckoned the compañeros, indicating that they were willing to talk. As the

insurgents approached, the villagers calmly surrounded them. Then, in a swift, coordinated assault, they pounced on the senderistas, snatching their weapons and hitting them with their bare fists and some stones they had hidden under their ponchos. One of

the rebels, the young woman, managed to pull a stick of dynamite from under her

poncho. Just as she was about to light the fuse, Marcelino Quispe Ccente grabbed her by

the back of the neck and forced her into submission.32

Amidst the clamor, one of the rebels managed to free himself and fled into the

nearby hills. Mama Juana was still in her house on the mountaintop of Uchuy

Macabamba when she noticed a commotion:

At first I thought they were chasing a fox. In the morning we were eating soup when suddenly we noticed that someone was being chased…below, by the river. …We knew that the foxes were always trying to eat the sheep and we were always having to chase them away. That was kind of how they chased him…all the way down to Ccarasencca. ...He escaped down below and a bunch of folks…from Macabamba—I can’t remember who, they’re all dead now—chased him.33

Despite the macabambinos’ efforts, the senderista eluded capture, escaping into the hills

toward Carhuahurán.

ADP Testimonio 201700. Emphasis added; Interview with Isidro Huamán., Huaychao (21 May 2006); Interview with Santos Huaylla, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

32 ADP, Testimonio 201700; Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4; Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

33 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

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The huaychainos dragged the remaining seven guerrillas out to the village square

and tied them to the juez rumi. After flogging their defenseless captives, the comuneros

contemplated lynching them. A handful of villagers objected. Women, we are told, were the most vocal opponents of the proposition. As mama Juana recollected, “We [women] cried, and we got together and said ‘killing isn’t easy, people die hard, we’re better off killing our livestock,” to which some men responded, “we men know best, even if we pay with our lives.” For these men, this was a matter of protecting the integrity of the village.

Some of the men spoke out against the idea, no doubt hoping to add “rational,” masculine validity to the women’s “emotionally-charged” pleas. “As you know,” tayta Isidro later clarified, “it was not normal to kill in this community, so I asked them [comunero men] not to kill the senderistas. Likewise, old man Santos said, ‘don’t kill them.’ But to no avail, the people had already made up their minds.” Without further delay, villagers from

Huaychao and Macabamba lynched each of the seven senderista captives.34

Alternate Ending

The above description is based on oral interviews, Truth Commission testimonies,

and journalistic reports conducted shortly after the lynching. It is worth mentioning,

however, that an alternative version of the events now circulates in Huaychao, which

credits peasants from the barrio of Macabamba for having spearheaded the attack. In this

version, between three and six senderistas entered Macabamba while only two to four stayed behind in the village center of Huaychao. Senderistas had entered Macabamba

34 ADP, Testimonio 201700; Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006); Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

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with the intention of executing one or more communal authorities who had appeared on their “black list.” The list, it seems, came from comuneros from that same barrio.

President Fortunato explained: “The macabambinos were aggressive people. …[They put the authorities on Shining Path’s black list] simply for spite. They complained to the senderistas just for spite. So here come these armed people and it’s hard not to take advantage of that, so they complained [to the senderistas about their authorities] and put them on the list.” Presuming to have the support of the entire neighborhood, the senderistas spread the word: “We will gather everyone together and kill the authorities.”

Apparently, the authorities had more allies than enemies, for the comuneros managed to kill all but one of the senderistas in a manner similar to the lynching described in the other version. It is unclear from this version if the villagers attacked the senderistas in a preemptive strike, or in retaliation for the execution of some of the authorities on the list, but the result was the same.35

Having bludgeoned and lynched the remaining rebels, an unknown number of macabambinos, wreaking of liquor and carrying clubs in their hands, with their dogs running closely alongside them, marched over the hill to the town center in Huaychao, where the remaining two or three senderistas were still debating with the villagers in the despacho. According to mama Alejandra, the macabambinos proudly explained to the peasants standing outside the despacho what they had just done, pressuring their neighbors to do the same: “These [senderistas] are against the government and against the hacendados.” Noticing that some had given food to the rebels, they added, “Ah,

35 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huaman, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006).

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maybe you all are in favor of these assassins. …We see you are still cooking for these people who have killed our own, now we are going to report you to the police[.]”

According to this version, it was around this time when the huaychainos attacked, captured, and lynched the remaining senderistas.36

In emphasizing the macabambinos’ protagonism in the attack, this version makes

some important revelations about village power relations. As this account illustrates, this

was not a harmonious relationship; customary authorities had their share of enemies

within the village, and those enemies were willing to submit some of those leaders to

guerrilla justice. Yet contempt for local authorities was not a collective sentiment, for

when the time came to turn their authorities over to the rebels, enough villagers came to

the defense of their varayoqs to overturn the will of the minority. Indeed, the

macabambinos involved in the counter-rebellion were prepared to kill the guerrillas if it

meant preserving their local cargo system.

Aftermath: The Formation of the Huaychao Militia

After the massacre, villagers realized the implications of their actions. Tayta

Ciprián recalled how rapidly events had unfolded that day: “Back then I had an aporque37 of potatoes, and my dad told me: ‘go fetch some potatoes for lunch and work hard.’ So I went to pick potatoes. …I was on my way back when I was told, ‘some guerrillas are staying down there.’ It was like we were all intoxicated [mareados] that day. …I was not myself.” He later added, “It was a very sad day, the children cried, the dogs howled, the

36 Ibid.

37 An aporque is an agricultural term referring to the covering of the base of a crop with soil to facilitate growth. In this case, the speaker is referring to the garden in which he had initiated this process.

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women cried as if they had been related to the deceased [rebels], even the sun shined a

low yellow. We were afraid, saying, ‘surely they will kill us all.’” Huaychainos knew

that there was no turning back at this point: “From that moment forward, the villagers

knew they were against the senderistas and that at any given moment they could come

and kill [us], which is why everyone agreed to ready their huaracas, rocks and knives, so

that they could defend themselves against the compañeros.” Campesinos from

Macabamba and other annexes joined with those of central Huaychao to form a “civil

vigilance” patrol in anticipation of a PCP-SL retaliation.38

Only two days after the Huaychao lynching, the newly formed “civil vigilance” patrol saw its first bit of action. Members from the patrol spotted a band of rebels descending on the community from the hills near Carhuahurán. The patrollers quickly alerted their compoblanos, who assembled in the village center. It was only at this point when villagers, “young and old, men and women,” agreed to send a few able-bodied men to the provincial capital to report the two-day-old lynching to the sinchis and request backup. The remaining militiamen, armed with their huaracas and the weapons they had confiscated from the lynched senderistas, went out to intercept the raid. Just then, in a zone known as Badopampa, the guerrillas let off an explosion that “trembled all of

[Huaychao].” The battle had begun.39

38 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (21 May 2006); ADP, Testimonio 201700.

39 ADP, Testimonio 201700.

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One of the patrollers was a licenciado40 who knew how to handle a weapon. He led the counterattack, manning the weapons of the slain senderistas, while the remaining montoneros (militiamen) followed closely behind with stones and huaracas. As the militiamen searched the perimeter of the community, rebels hiding in Mount

Uchuycompañía began firing on them. Between rounds, the senderistas taunted the huaychainos: “Miserable [huaychainos], plate-lickers of Belaunde, now you will be pulverized, miserable ‘black heads.’” The patrollers fired back: “[If we are ‘black heads,’] what color are your heads, red?”41 At around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, some

four to five hours after the altercation had begun, the licenciado shot and wounded the

female leader of the squadron, one “Comrade Elena Carrasco,” forcing the rebels into

retreat. 42

One can imagine the surprise of the sinchi Lieutenant in Huanta that Saturday

morning as Huaychao’s own Isidro Huamán and Alberto Aguilar, accompanied by Lucas

Ccente of Macabamba, attempted to communicate to him through broken Spanish that

they not only had killed senderistas, but that they had retained their corpses as proof.

The Lieutenant immediately cobbled together a group of twenty civil guards and hurried

the huaychainos into a sinchi helicopter bound toward Huaychao. When they touched

down, tayta Isidro set foot outside the chopper, took one look around, turned toward the

40 The term is usually used in reference to a person with a specialization beyond a general college education, but in this context it refers to someone who has served in the military.

41 The term “black heads” (‘cabezas negras’) is a colloquial expression used to refer to Peruvian security forces, who often carried out their operations in the countryside while wearing black ski masks. The “red” reference is more obvious, referring to the red communist flag that rebels paraded in and out of highland villages.

42 ADP, Testimonio 201700. Emphasis added.

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commanding officer, and confessed that this was not his village. After a few moments of

confused panic, the sinchis realized that in their haste they had neglected to ask the huaychainos which Huaychao they belonged to, Huaychao grande (big) or Huaychao

chico (little), and had flown directly to the larger community in nearby Huamanga

Province. By this point, weather conditions had gotten too foggy to fly into the

Iquichano highlands. Determined to arrive one way or another in the absence of paved

roads, the troops made the long hike to Huaychao with tayta Isidro and his compoblanos

leading the way and carrying the guards’ weapons and equipment for them. When they

reached the mountains of Huayllay, the team set up camp for the night.43

Comuneros and authorities in Huaychao had already been busy plotting their next

move before the expedition arrived the following morning. Peasants from Huaychao and

its annexes had gathered comuneros and authorities from surrounding Iquichano

villages—Uchuraccay, Ccarasencca, and others—in the mountain of Pacopata Uana

Lucapa Pucllanan to discuss what had taken place there over the previous forty-eight

hours. These communities agreed to form their own “civil vigilance” bands and to aid

one another against senderista incursions. The meeting was still underway when the

highlanders noticed a helicopter circling overhead. Weather conditions had cleared since

the previous days, so a military chopper was sent in to aid the police expedition that was

arriving afoot. Locals watched as a handful of linces (soldiers) in green fatigues

parachuted from the helicopter. One of the few bilingual peasants came out to meet the

linces, bringing them up to speed on the events that had taken place. The locals escorted

43ADP, Testimonio 201700; Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006); Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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them to the locale where the confiscated guns were being held. One of the linces studied

the weapons and fired off a few test rounds from one of the guns. The linces in the

helicopter, still circulating overhead, mistook this for enemy fire and unleashed a smoke

bomb and began to fire upon the crowd. The linces on the ground emerged from the smoke yelling at their colleagues, “It’s us!” imploring them to cease fire. Fortunately, the linces in the helicopter realized their mistake before inflicting any injuries.44

Meanwhile, the police team that had made the journey on foot had reached the

outskirts of the village. Groups of Iquichano men, women, and children, numbering 150,

came out to meet the party, offering potatoes and broad beans and joining the march

waving white flags. When the group finally arrived at Huaychao at roughly 10 in the

morning, some twenty hours after they had first set out toward the village from Huanta

City, they were greeted by both the local varayoqs and the linces who had arrived by

helicopter earlier that morning. These local authorities walked the security forces over to

the seven corpses, which had been laid out in line along with the confiscated weapons in

the center of the plaza, and narrated in Quechua what had occurred on the morning of 21

January 1983. “Well done,” the sinchis commended the peasants, “that’s the way you

ought to defend yourselves.” But the praise came with a stern warning: “Had you cooked

for the terrorists you would have been totally disappeared. …We’re hearing talk that in

Huaychao young and old will be wiped out [by the rebels] for having killed the terrorists.

As you know, [the senderistas] have people all over. That’s why you must organize and

assemble. And we will make a defense. There should also be a President, a commando.”

44 ADP, Testimonio 201700.

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With that, the grassroots “civil vigilance” patrols were converted into Civil Defense

Patrols (CDCs), more commonly known as rondas campesinas or montoneros.45

EXPLAINING THE HUAYCHAO LYNCHING

What motivated huaychainos to resist Shining Path violently? An analysis of the events leading up to and including the lynching reveals that several factors were in play.

More than anything, indigenous villagers from Huaychao-Macabamba mobilized against

Shining Path to defend historically and culturally rooted conceptions regarding authority,

gender, race, class, and justice, while at the same time hoping to gain the upper hand in

the regional power struggle.

An Attack against ‘Our Father’?

In perhaps the most comprehensive study of Huanta Province’s rondas

campesinas, Peruvian anthropologist José Coronel hypothesizes that the defense of

traditional authorities was central to Iquichano highlanders’ decision to resist Shining

Path. He claims that “in the series of testimonies that we’ve recorded, the negation,

substitution and even assassination of communal authorities appeared above all else as

the principal cause for the peasantry’s rejection of [PCP-]SL.”46 Central to his thesis is

the notion that in late 1982, Shining Path rebels assassinated Eusebio Ccente and Pedro

Rimachi, the respective President and Lieutenant Governor of Huaychao. This, Coronel

45 Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4; Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006); Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

46 Coronel, “Violencia política,” 47.

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concludes, led the comuneros of Huaychao to retaliate against Shining Path militants,

having interpreted the attack against their traditional authorities as “an attack against ‘our father.’”47

This is not entirely accurate. Coronel bases his conclusion on testimony not from

Huaychao-Macabamba but rather from nearby Uchuraccay; the source most likely had

confused both time and place. To a person, the huaychainos and macabambinos

consulted for the current study claimed that the senderistas had never even entered

Huaychao or its annexes before January 1983, let alone kill its leaders. Even more

striking, none of the locals had even heard of Eusebio Ccente or Pedro Rimachi—many

reminded me that the surname Rimachi did not even exist in Huaychao-Macabamba.48

These local testimonies lead me to conclude that the counter-rebellion in Huaychao was not a simple case of a homogenous mass of comuneros avenging the death of their

“beloved” leaders.

Iquichano authorities were no more “beloved” than the local leaders from other indigenous communities. As previous chapters have shown, huaychaino commoners frequently accused their leaders of corruption and other abuses of authority. In fact, these contentions between comuneros and customary authorities may have been what led some peasants—albeit, a minority—to solicit Sendero’s intervention in the zone in the first place. One will recall that the senderistas who entered Macabamba for the first time

47 Ibid., 47-48.

48 For example: Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (6 February 2006); Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao (7 February 2006). Several other huaychainos affirmed these recorded testimonies through personal correspondences in 2006. Macabamba residents also confirmed this in July 2007. We have come across the surname Rimachi in the current study, however, it refers mostly to the annex of Ccochaccocha.

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carried with them a “blacklist” featuring the names of certain authorities they intended to punish. Given the history of comunero-authority antagonism in the zone before the rebellion, I suspect that one of the authorities’ local enemies furnished the guerrillas with the list as a means of settling a personal dispute. And while the huaychainos never considered the possibility that their own neighbors may have initially, secretly supported the revolutionaries, their testimonies suggest otherwise. Mama Alejandra remembered encountering the insurgents while grazing her sheep on the outside of village. The strangers asked her, “Where does Hernando Tampiy live, ma’am?” to which she replied,

“Over there a ways,” and continued about her business.49 According to mama Alejandra,

Hernando welcomed the rebels into his dwelling at the edge of the hamlet, where they rested before breaking off into two groups: one group headed down to address the other villagers and authorities of Huaychao, and the other group continued along to

Macabamba, where they were also taken in by local residents before addressing the entire neighborhood. Mama Alejandra made no indication that Hernando had collaborated with the militants, pointing instead to her and Hernando’s ignorance of the situation: “I asked myself, ‘Who are these guys?’ I didn’t even realize [that they were Shining Path] and the thought wouldn’t have even crossed our [mine or Hernando’s] minds.”50 However, from this testimony, it is clear that Hernando and the residents who serviced the rebels in

Macabamba had had prior contact with them—probably at the regional markets where they were known to frequent—whereupon they would have had opportunity to denounce their communal authorities.

49 This is a pseudonym.

50 Interview with Alejandra Ccente, Huaychao (2 February 2006).

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A few villagers from nearby Ccarasencca dared to conspire against local

authorities even after the Huaychao-Macabamba lynching. During one of their early

incursions into the neighborhood, Shining Path subversives solicited villagers’ support.

“No, we can’t get involved in that,” was the response they got from most residents. But as one villager told the Truth Commission, a compoblano named José decided to give the rebels a chance:

It was well known that a strong wind would present itself hours before the senderistas would come because the wind was like a warning to the inhabitants to take off from here into the hills and ravines so as not to be found; Nevertheless, José was the only one who stayed behind to wait for them in his house. They say that his wife opposed his reception of the senderistas, and she even warned him about what could come of it; nevertheless, José wouldn’t listen: ‘What do you want me to do? [T]hey’re people just like me and we have to accommodate them,’ he’d say.51

José offered the guerrillas food and lodging each time they came into town, where they

would plan upcoming incursions, including those that specifically targeted Ccarasencca

authorities. Apparently, José was not alone. Marcelino Huaylla recounted another

incident involving Fernando Iskayrayay,52 a well-known abigeo: “One time the

senderistas arrived at the house of Fernando Iskayrayay, and he made up a rumor,

detailing the names of the authorities so that they would say or take down our name [the

name of the local authorities]. He made up this rumor because he hated [the authorities],

because this guy was always getting into trouble, rustling livestock.”53 As these

examples demonstrate, communities were not entirely peaceful or homogeneous units.

51 ADP, Testimonio 200684.

52 This is a pseudonym.

53 Interview with Marcelino Huaylla, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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Some comuneros supported their authorities; others resented them to the point of wanting

to submit them to Sendero’s “popular justice.” Therefore, we should be careful not to

conclude that the defense of local authorities was the primary reason Iquichano peasants resisted Sendero Luminoso. If anything, some peasants were motivated by a sense of resentment toward their authorities to support Shining Path.

Nevertheless, these resentful peasants were a minority of the Huaychao-

Macabamba population, and most did support the counter-rebellion. And for these ronderos, the defense of local authorities was certainly a factor in their decision to resist

PCP-SL. After a night of heavy drinking, coca-leaf chewing, and laughter, Narciso, a former rondero whom we have mentioned above, looked me square in the eye and confessed, “You know, Sendero’s overall message wasn’t really that bad, about punishing wife abusers and cattle rustlers and all. But we couldn’t imagine wiping out our varayoqs. What for? They were so vital to our community.” He looked down into his full cup for a brief moment. As he lifted it to his lips, he added in a near whisper,

“Who knows, if it wasn’t for all that nonsense about liquidating local leaders, I’d probably be out there right now, fighting alongside them.” As soon as the words left his lips, the one-time montonero guzzled down the rest of his alcohol, as if swallowing his own words.54

What villagers seemed to be defending was not so much the people who headed

the local cargo system as the system itself, with all of its cultural significances and practical uses. As we have seen in previous chapters, whether or not villagers agreed

54 Field notes, Huaychao (8 February 2006).

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with the ways that individual authorities had carried out their duties was irrelevant, for most recognized the important role of local authorities in upholding the community’s social, political, and cultural fabric. To many huaychainos, the civil-religious hierarchy itself was a symbol of public order, stability, and justice during times of intense structural change and in the absence of a strong state. For this reason, when comuneros and authorities told the militants that they would not support any movement that sought to overthrow “the government,” they were referring not to the Peruvian state but to this local authority structure. They could not—or would not—imagine a world in which this traditional system did not exist.

This traditional power structure was premised upon a collective respect for village elders. It is worth mentioning that some of the most vocal advocates of village resistance were ancianos. Shining Path’s proposed administrative system posed a clear threat to their traditional hegemony. Illiterate elders feared relinquishing their influence over political decision-making to the party’s young, college-educated cadres. Fortunately for these elderly men, enough peasants shared this value of age and experience over youth and education.

But huaychainos did not only feel the need to defend their endogamous power holders. One recalls that several huaychainos commented on Senderos’ uncompromising position with respect to non-indigenous hacendados. This critique failed to account for an indigenous moral economy that clearly established the parameters of acceptable behavior a propos race, class, and power. Huaychainos harbored no ill-will towards their erstwhile landowners. To them, Chávez and Juscamaita’s behavior towards their indigenous peones was acceptable given their race and class.

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Central to this patriarchal system was the defense and subjugation of indigenous women. Seen as weak and vulnerable to sexual aggressions from the outside, women in

Huaychao were limited in both social and spacial mobility. The male-dominated civil- religious hierarchy reinforced this status quo. Although huaychaina women sometimes challenged these gendered assumptions, they did not succeed in subverting them. The following discussion explores the extent to which this gendered cultural logic informed huaychainos’ decision to resist Shining Path.

Putting the “Social” in “Socialism”

Víctor lived and worked in the highland department of Huancavelica in 1982. He labored in a nearby mine while his wife, Maximiliana, looked after their two daughters,

María and Nora, who attended school in the Ayacuchan district of Huanta. While it was no doubt difficult to live so far away from his family, he had reason to feel proud that sixteen-year-old María was one of the top students in her high school.

Víctor had heard of cases in which the Huanta sinchis had ransacked houses and stolen valuables, but he insisted in sending his daughters to a decent public school. For this reason, Víctor’s family remained in Huanta even after the Peruvian security forces had declared a city-wide curfew between the hours of 6 p.m. and 5 a.m. Sometime in

July or August 1982, however, the sinchis entered the residence of his wife and daughters. They searched the house for a while, “thinking they would find something” that would compromise one of his daughters. When they found nothing out of the ordinary, they left the dwelling, but not before confiscating a radio they found there. This episode did not deter the working father. In fact, it was not until Víctor received word

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from María’s principle in mid-November that members from the sinchis had been disappearing high school girls in Huanta—and that María might be in danger—that

Víctor decided to pay a visit to his family and reassess the political environment. He found his wife and daughters unharmed, if not a little worried. The concerned father remained with his family for two days. Once he was convinced that his loved ones were safe, he returned to Huancavelica, leaving Maximiliana to look after their children until the situation abated.55

One afternoon, approximately two weeks after Víctor had returned to

Huancavelica, María did not come home from school. Hoping for the best but fearing the worst, Maximiliana went out looking for her daughter, stopping neighbors and friends to see if they had seen or heard from her. After searching the city for three days without hearing any news, Maximiliana traveled to Huancavelica to inform her husband of the disappearance. Víctor requested one week’s leave from his job and the worried parents returned to Huanta in search of their teenage daughter. The week came and went, and the discouraged father returned to his community. Maximiliana remained in Huanta through the New Year in hopes of solving the mystery. One day, the aggrieved mother found herself flipping through the pages of the magazine Gente when a horrifying image caught her eye: it was that of her slain daughter lying alongside several other corpses. Beneath the image, the caption read that the bodies had been found in a highland community called Huaychao.56

55ADP, Testimonio number suppressed.

56 Ibid.

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In their deposition to the Truth Commission some twenty years later, Víctor and

Maximiliana maintained that members of the Peruvian security forces had assassinated

their innocent daughter. In all likelihood, though, María was the female senderista killed by peasants during the Huaychao-Macabamba lynching.57 Versions from both the

aggrieved parents and witnesses in Huaychao support this conclusion. In their testimony,

Víctor and Maximiliana claimed that their daughter showed up missing in late 1982, that

is, within two months of the Huaychao-Macabamba lynching. They also recalled having

learned of the now famous Uchuraccay massacre—discussed below—shortly before

discovering the image of their daughter’s corpse in the magazine.58 The Uchuraccay

incident occurred within days of the Huaychao lynching. María probably spent the later

weeks of 1982 and the early weeks of 1983 campaigning in the Iquichano highlands

before meeting her fate in Huaychao in late January. Moreover, witnesses from

Huaychao claimed to have overpowered a young woman “from Huancavelica” just

before she lit the fuse of an explosive that they claimed would have killed them all.59

Thus, we can reasonably conclude that young María was the female senderista who the huaychainos attacked and killed in the despacho.

The descriptions that huaychaino men gave of María illustrate their uneasiness with empowered women: “The señorita wore jeans—with a skirt over them,” President

Fortunato and tayta Esteban recalled, adding, “[She] didn’t have breasts; she just had

57 It is not my intention here to bring shame upon grieving parents, or to compromise them politically. It is for this reason that I have withheld the call number of the testimony and the surname of the indicated family.

58 ADP, Testimonio number suppressed.

59 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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some oval belly buttons pressed way up against her body that looked nothing like

breasts.”60 Through these descriptions, male huaychainos were able to distinguish the

“masculinized” senderista women from the more clearly “feminine” huaychainas who

wore skirts and petticoats and had identifiable female body parts. Such visions regarding

senderista women stripped them of their femininity, rendering them androgynous. These

understandings were further buttressed by the rebel women’s actions. Whereas

geographic mobility and political authority was limited for women in Huaychao,

senderista women were anomalies, traveling warriors who carried weapons and barked out orders to lower-ranking men.

Not only did huaychainos fear losing their authority to these “hermaphrodites,” but they also feared the possibility that their own women would undergo such a metamorphous. This may explain why the huaychainos attacked and killed María. In

their own defense, male villagers claimed that the guerrilla provoked the attack by

reaching for a stick of dynamite. However, at least one testimony from the region

challenges this claim: “[A]nd so one of the villagers approached the Sendero Luminoso

group [in the despacho] and asks for one of their weapons, ‘how does that dynamite

work, let me see it[.]’”61 While this version of the events erroneously ends with the

huaychainos using the explosives to blow all seven senderistas to pieces, its accuracy

may lie in the explanation it gives for the way in which comuneros overpowered María.

Rather than taking the huaychainos’ self-exculpatory account at face value, we must

consider the less “honorable” possibility that these men attacked and killed a defenseless

60 Ibid.

61 ADP, Testimonio 200684.

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senderista woman after having convinced her to surrender her weapon. In the final

analysis, whether or not María made the first move is irrelevant, for comunero men still

found it necessary to torture and kill a woman whom they perceived to be unnaturally

empowered and “masculinized”—even after she had ceased to be a physical threat—in

order to reinforce their own patriarchal hegemony within the community.

But men in Huaychao did not only feel threatened by female rebels. The

following caption from the same conversation with President Fortunato and tayta Esteban

illustrates the gendered meanings that the two huaychaino men derived from Shining

Path’s political discourse:

Question: Why do you two think that [resistance to Shining Path] occurred in Huaychao and not in other towns? Esteban: People started commenting, “They’re going to take our women and we won’t be able to do a thing about it,” so people started objecting even more. Question: How’s that? Fortunato: It’s just that the senderistas said: “If it’s all right with you guys, we can make love to your women and run off with them.” Esteban: There would be “communism.” Fortunato: So [our men] said: “You can’t just sleep with our women!” Esteban: That was “social politics” [‘socio política’], and it was definitely why people objected, because it was against the government, and because [our men] said: “They’ll steal our women and we can’t just live like animals.”62

While it is possible that male senderistas used this type of sexually explicit language in their conversations with indigenous peasants, it is highly unlikely—most of the recorded cases of rape and sexual encounters during the civil war involved members of the

Peruvian security forces and not senderistas.63

62 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006). Emphasis added.

63 See, for example, Robin Kirk, Untold Terror: Violence Against Women in Peru’s Armed Conflict (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992).

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I offer the following explanations for huaychaino men’s statements. The first is

that this is a post-conflict narrative. Because their own cultural logics associated the defense of community integrity with the protection of women from outside sexual aggression, huaychaino men invented this gender-laden encounter after the fact to justify their violent actions. A second possibility is that indigenous men, unfamiliar with leftist ideology, extracted a sexual connotation from Shining Path’s political discourse

regarding “socialism,” “communism,” and “equality.” Finally, it is possible that this

concern with protecting their women against attacks from the outside represented a secondary anxiety attached to the more imminent threat against village structures.

Indeed, each of these three scenarios may have been in play, for each underscores huaychainos’ anxieties about the social disruption of the community.

Mardonio’s Missing Fingers

On 27 January 1983, a Twin Bell 212 military helicopter fought its way through the heavy fog that hovered over Huaychao in search of a clear landing spot. The helicopter was one of several that had been sent by Peruvian security forces to the

Iquichano highlands since the Huaychao lynching. Down below, the newly formed ronderos—not yet recognized as such—from Huaychao and nearby villages approached the aircraft waving white flags. After landing in the village square, military and medical personnel, accompanied by journalist Gustavo Gorriti and photographer Oscar Medrano, of the Peruvian weekly Caretas, disembarked from the helicopter. “Before the propellers

[had] even finish[ed] spinning,” reported Gorriti, the comuneros were recounting the events of the past week to the Quechua-speaking Medrano. They escorted the team to the

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calabozo, where they were holding five Shining Path collaborators. Each of the five prisoners were from Carhuahurán. “Coincidence?” wondered Gorriti, asking villagers if there were any pending court cases or boundary disputes between the two communities.

They assured him that there were not.64

Twenty-three years later, at a holding cell in Ayacucho City’s Yanamilla

Maximum Security Prison, Mardonio,65 one of the five captives from Carhuahurán referred to in Gorriti’s report, awaited Julián and me to tell us his side of the story. The crime for which Mardonio was serving his sentence in 2006 had nothing to do with his alleged involvement with Sendero nearly a quarter century earlier. After the huaychainos accused him of collaborating with the guerrillas back in 1983, the military detained him in Ayacucho City, but he was released when no evidence was brought against him. He was presently serving a multi-year sentence for having orchestrated the extralegal execution of some narco-traffickers in Carhuahurán a few years earlier. After the Shining

Path insurgency, Peruvian officials and NGOs made the defense of human rights and the return to democracy and lawfulness a major part of their political campaigns; no longer would the type of vigilante justice that prevailed during the counterinsurgency be tolerated. A top communal authority at the time of the assault of the drug smugglers,

Mardonio experienced this new policy firsthand.

As the guard called me forward for my body search, I looked back one last time at

Julián, who reassured me with a simple nod of the head that this was a worthwhile

64 Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4.

65 ‘Mardonio’ was the subject’s name at the time he was captured in Huaychao in 1983. He now goes by another name, which I have withheld for security purposes.

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endeavor. After a rather uncomfortable body search, a guard escorted Julián and me to

the gates of the courtyard where Mardonio was engaged in a game of fulbito (mini-

soccer). Mardonio recognized his friend Julián immediately and came over to the gate to greet us. Before telling us that we would have to wait for him inside the courtyard until

he finished his game, Mardonio—a killer, but not an impolite one—tried his best to

squeeze his hand through the opening in the chain links to shake my hand. I did the

same, noticing immediately that my fingers were only touching one finger, three nubs

and a thumb—Mardonio only had two fingers. Prison rules require male visitors to

remain locked down with the detainee until the gates are reopened at 3 p.m. Not having

known this ahead of time, we arrived at 9 o’clock in the morning, which means that

between watching Mardonio play soccer and sitting with him in his cell for six hours, we

had plenty of time to ask him how he had lost his fingers, but for now we wanted to know

about his version of the events of January 1983.66

A mere teenager at the time, Mardonio had learned of the Huaychao lynching.

Driven, he claimed, by nothing more than adolescent curiosity, Mardonio and six of his

friends set out toward Huaychao to investigate: “I went up the mountain. …We climbed

it from Carhuahurán, and the next thing we knew there were a bunch of people from

Huaychao in the mountain throwing rocks at us. They must have thought that we were

Sendero.” The huaychainos referred to here, who were most likely the newly-mobilized

militiamen, captured the carhuahuranos and led them to the juez rumi in the center of the

village square. There, villagers gathered around and accused the carhuahuranos of

66 Field notes, Ayacucho City (circa 13 March 2006).

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guerrilla activity before tying them to the stone: “As they were grabbing me, some people came to my defense, but more were [in favor of punishing us],” Mardonio explained. In a desperate attempt to pacify the increasingly uncompromising mob, Mardonio broke free, climbed on top of the justice rock and addressed the crowd. “If I were with

Sendero, why would I have even come to Huaychao?” Mardonio asked them, hoping to appeal to the huaychainos’ reason. But to no avail. “They had all been drinking, and that’s why they decided to throw us in the prison…it was because of the liquor.”

According to Mardonio, he and his six friends—two more than the total of five cited in

Gorriti’s article—remained in the community holding cell for four days before the arrival of Gorriti and the military personnel.67

Neither Julián nor I ever mustered up the courage to ask Mardonio how he had

lost his fingers, and we left the prison with nothing more than an inkling that the

montoneros from Huaychao had stripped Mardonio’s fingers off his hand during his

interrogation.68 Perhaps other huaychainos who were present that day would confirm our

suspicion. When we later asked one-time rondero Ciprián to revisit the events of

Mardonio’s capture and interrogation, he first reassured us of the carhuahuranos’ guilt:

Question: Can you talk about that day in detail? Answer: That’s when they said [Mardonio] was a terruco and they interrogated him. Question: What did he say? Answer: “Yeah, we’ve been running around with so and so.” Question: They were only [running around] with senderistas? Answer: That’s right.69

67 Personal correspondence. Ayacucho City (circa 13 March 2006).

68 Field notes, Ayacucho City (circa 13 March 2006).

69 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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Tayta Ciprián went on to assert that his fellow villagers released the

carhuahuranos precisely because they had admitted their involvement with the rebels:

“What happened was they said, ‘[The guerrillas] tricked us. …We were recruited.’ After

that [Mardonio] was recognized by everyone as someone who was now on the right path

and nobody gave him any more trouble.”70 Mardonio was even allowed to confirm his

new loyalties by joining the regional counterinsurgency, tayta Ciprián said. In fact, it

was during one of his incursions as a rondero—not as a tortured senderista—that

Mardonio lost his fingers: “[Mardonio] was fighting alongside us [ronderos from

Huaychao] and he was confidently implanting a flag in the hills of Yurac Qasa when [an

explosive] from his pocket got hot and exploded in his hands. …That’s why [Mardonio]

doesn’t have any fingers. From there we took [Mardonio] in a chacana [artesanal

stretcher] to Carhuahurán and from there he went by [military] helicopter to [the hospital

in] Huanta.”71 At last, the mystery of Mardonio’s missing fingers was solved! What

remains a mystery, however, is whether Mardonio was in fact a senderista militant or

sympathizer.

If Mardonio and his compoblanos were “running around” with Shining Path guerrillas, as tayta Ciprián so adamantly confirmed, then they were most likely helping the guerrillas avenge the deaths of the seven fallen senderistas, which raises the question:

why would carhuahuranos help Sendero attack Huaychao? If they were not involved

with the rebels, as Mardonio insisted, then one might ask: why would the huaychainos

70 Ibid.

71 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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capture innocent carhuahuranos? I suggest that both questions lead to the same answer:

that the armed conflict served peasants as a pretext for gaining the upper hand in the

inter-village power struggle.

This became more and more apparent as the civil war waged on in the Huanta

highlands over the next several years. Whether or not huaychainos agreed with mama

Juana’s claim that “in Carhuahurán people ate from the same pot as the senderistas,” they

certainly treated carhuahuranos as if they had.72 Over the course of the counter-

rebellion, montonero Ciprián witnessed three separate cases in which suspected guerrillas

were tied to the justice rock of Huaychao before being released; all three were from

Carhuahurán.73 Other carhuahuranos were not so fortunate. From his prison cell,

Mardonio recalled that on Christmas morning, 1983, ronderos from Huaychao-

Macabamba stormed Carhuahurán and killed seven alleged “senderistas.” Less than two

months later, Mardonio continued, ronderos claimed the lives of seven authorities from

his home town.74

On other occasions, carhuahuranos were brought to Huaychao before being

killed. The Huamán family cited several instances in which huaychainos killed

carhuahuranos in their own village. President Fortunato and tayta Esteban remembered an incident in which ronderos from Huaychao dragged two young carhuahuranos into

the village, tied them down, and kicked them to death.75 Fortunato’s brother, tayta Isidro,

72 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

73 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

74 Personal correspondence, Ayacucho City (13 March 2006).

75 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

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spent some time living in Carhuahurán during the violence. He remembered hearing on

more than one occasion that his fellow huaychainos had captured and tortured villagers

from the community: “They didn’t tie them up, but they did [physically] punish one, and

I think they even killed one, I’m not sure.” When asked where these victims were from,

he replied, “They were all people from Carhuahurán[.]” While these people may well

have been involved with Sendero, their fellow villagers must not have felt so, for they

took out their aggression on tayta Isidro after he was nominated President of Huaychao in the mid-1980s: “After that, folks from Carhuahurán became envious and said, ‘Throw him in the calabozo,’ [using the pretext that] I had arrived late to my patrol duties[.]”76

Altercations also erupted between ronderos from Huaychao and villagers from

Huaynacancha, which despite being separated from Huaychao by nothing more than a hill, fell within the jurisdiction of Carhuahurán. Tayta Esteban once told Julián and me of his participation in an altercation with villagers from Huaynacancha after the January

1983 lynching: “The [sinchis] came down [by helicopter] from all over, some over here, others over there, and then they killed senderistas. They also responded [sic], but our

people helped them to kill. I even fought with two guys in Huaynacancha.” As tayta

Esteban said this, President Fortunato chuckled, reminding him, “that was later.” “I

know it was later, it was in May,” an irritated tayta Esteban retorted, “You were off

dancing fiesta in Yanahuaqra[.]” Laughing at his cousin’s claim of having fought two

“senderistas” was President Fortunato’s way of disparaging the altercation. I got the

impression that President Fortunato was teasing his cousin for trying to turn a basic inter-

76 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao, (21 May 2006).

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community altercation into an act of counterinsurgent heroism. This may also explain

why an annoyed tayta Esteban barked back with an equally disparaging remark about

partying that questioned President Fortunato’s commitment to the counterinsurgency

effort.77

Tayta Mariano also talked of another curious episode involving Simeón and

Víctor Velasquez, the abigeos from Huaynacancha who allegedly stole two of his cows.

The huaychaino scoffed, “Well, there is a God above who sees everything. ‘He will

bring justice,’ I always say, but the terrucos killed [one of the Velasquez brothers]. So

there you have it, I’m still alive, but he and all his family were killed and they even took

all his animals.”78 Tayta Mariano’s tone seemed to suggest that there was more to his story than he was willing to divulge. Did senderistas really kill the Velazquez brothers, or did a rondero from Huaychao pay the abigeo a visit during a nightly watch?

Villagers of Huaychao indicated that their leadership in the region’s counterinsurgency effort gave them a kind of regional respect and authority that they had never enjoyed before: “From that point on,” President Fortunato boasted, “we were like a

[political] center. … After the lynching, we had power and the other towns were scared of us, because they thought that we would kill them just like we killed the terrorists, that’s why [the journalists] wanted to report about us.”79 Through their display of

military valor, the ronderos of Huaychao believed they had usurped regional hegemony from the municipal center of Carhuahurán.

77 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

78 Interview with Mariano Quispe, Huaychao, (7 February 2006).

79 Interview with Fortunato Huamán and Esteban Huamán, Huaychao (5 Februar 2006).

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Iquichano Networks

This is not to say that Iquichano communities were in constant tension. To the

contrary, they relied heavily on the very socioeconomic networks that the guerrillas had

been trying to extinguish. Merchants such as the salt traders who informed mama Juana

of Sendero’s early presence in the region could also inform patrollers of imminent guerrilla forays. Moreover, a peasant’s interpersonal contacts in communities near and far—established through trade, compadrazgo, and inter-marriage—proved vital in a

scenario in which guerrilla warfare made it difficult to distinguish friend from foe.

Such was the case for Mardonio. One witness remembered that he and his fellow

prisoners tried to evoke compassion from their captors by reminding them, “We are mere

yernos[.]”80 Mardonio’s use of the word “yerno” here differs from previous uses that we have seen. Whereas in other cases villagers used the term to emphasize exogamy, the carhuahuranos used it here link themselves to the huaychainos. In effect, the

carhuahuranos were reminding their accusers that, while technically not “autochthonous”

to the community, they were still tangentially connected to the villagers through extended

kinship, and therefore should be given the benefit of the doubt. And this strategy worked.

Mardonio’s padrino, Fortunato, not-yet communal President but still a well-respected huaychaino, even came to his defense. While tayta Fortunato’s reassurances fell short of convincing the hostile mob of the young teenager’s innocence, they may have saved his life, for villagers spared the lives of each of the seven carhuahuranos whom they

80 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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captured that day—something that the seven senderista captured days earlier could not

claim.81

Iquichanos also made use of these inter-village communication networks for the

regional defense effort. Ronderos alerted patrollers in nearby communities of senderista

advancements by blowing trompetillas (small horns) and whistles.82 In other cases,

ronderos sent runners to nearby communities to request backup, as one rondero from

Huaychao detailed: “If [Sendero] attacked Carhuahurán, and [ronderos from

Carhuahurán] called on us, then we went. We also went to Chuqui, Pampalca, and they all helped us since sometimes our community was attacked. …We were also helped by

Ccarasencca and Chuqui, also Llaulli and Tupín, and we’ve always remained united, even now.” 83 Gorriti alluded to this inter-community solidarity network in his report on

Huaychao. Just as Gorriti and Medrano were inquiring about the captives from

Carhuahurán, village authorities received word that eight Shining Path guerrillas were

making their way toward Uchuraccay. Communal authorities quickly rounded up fifty

civil vigilance patrollers and headed off to lend their neighbors a hand. Major Jorge

Barboza considered sending air support to Uchuraccay, but the heavy fog made flight in

the Twin Bell 212 helicopter impossible: At that moment, a terrifying thought struck the

young limeño journalist: “It is possible, painfully possible, that at this moment, the eight limeño and ayacuchano journalists who had left Huamanga one day earlier, with direction toward Uchurajay and Huaychau [sic] [to investigate the lynching of the seven

81 Personal correspondence, Ayacucho City (circa 13 March 2006).

82 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (5 February 2006).

83 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

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senderistas], are being attacked and killed by the throng of comuneros who—in an almost

frantic state of fear—have mistaken them for a group from Sendero.”84 Unfortunately for

Gorriti and his eight referenced colleagues, he was right.85 Nevertheless, the passage

highlights the solidarity displayed by ronderos from different communities.

Peasant Justice

Before January 1983, huaychainos heard stories of—and some even witnessed

firsthand—Sendero’s mechanisms for punishing its opponents. This system had no place

in a community such as Huaychao, where villagers believed that customary law—

throwing deviants in the calobozo, tying them to the juez rumi, or, if need be, whipping

them—had successfully curbed many social conflicts. Moreover, these forms of

punishment typically represented the limits of peasant justice. Death was only seen as an

acceptable castigation in extreme cases in which the accused was held by the collective to

be consciously and impenitently undermining public order. Thus, when Shining Path

cadres proposed submitting local power holders and moral deviants to their totalitarian

“popular justice,”—which at this point in the guerrilla insurgency now included long,

drawn-out executions—huaychainos adamantly objected. Instead, peasants from

Huaychao elected to submit the guerrillas to their own justice as a preventative measure

in order to defend a system that they viewed as superior. Indigenous peasants throughout

the Peruvian Andes would soon follow suit.

84 Gorriti, “Trágicos linchamientos,” 23-4.

85 For an overview of this event, see Comisión Investigadora de los sucesos de Uchuraccay (Comisión Investigadora), Informe sobre los sucesos de Uchuraccay, Mario Vargas Llosa, ed. (Lima, 1983); CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5; Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

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THE SPREAD OF THE RONDAS CAMPESINAS, 1983-1995

What makes the Huaychao counter-rebellion so significant is that it triggered a

large-scale social movement of peasant protest against Shining Path. In the end, it was

these peasant counterinsurgency militias that led to a rapid decline of a guerrilla

insurgency that had counted on the support of these peasants. What follows is a synopsis

of the major developments in the peasant counterinsurgency.

Counterinsurgency in the Iquichano Highlands

News of the Huaychao lynching spread quickly throughout the Huanta highlands.

Indigenous villagers living in this part of the province spoke of the incident with a high

degree of admiration: “[U]pon learning of the massacres [committed by Sendero] in other

regions,” one peasant later told the Truth Commission, “the pobladores [inhabitants] of

Huaychao and Macabamba decided to calmly wait for them, ‘[C]arajo,’ they say, ‘the

senderistas are on their way here from Uchuraccay, we have huaraca[s], stone[s], knives

and clubs, these are our weapons and with these we will liquidate them,’ they said.”86

Hoping to emulate what they imagined as a masculine display of courage under fire, communities throughout the Huanta highlands began forming their own CDCs. Mama

Juana explained, “It was not just Huaychao and Macabamba, but rather all the towns got together and said: ‘[The rebels] are here now. If we die [defending ourselves], then so be it. That’s why they killed, and [they said] ‘we must kill them all because if just one

86 ADP, Testimonio 200684.

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[senderista] escapes then he can come back[.]’”87 With respect to the counter-rebellion,

most Iquichanos agreed: “We will be as one.”88

The Iquichanos’ words quickly translated into action. Within days of the

Huaychao lynching, peasants from numerous Iquichano communities had reportedly

killed as many as twenty-five presumed senderistas. 89 Then, on the first day of

February, 1983 between 1,500 and 2,000 Huanta highlanders invaded properties

surrounding Tambo, in the neighboring province of La Mar. The group was joined by a

delegation of anywhere between forty and 200 comuneros waving white flags who

paraded around five tightly-bound, half-naked alleged senderistas whose heads had been wrapped in their own clothes.90

One of the towns involved in this counterinsurgency alliance was Uchuraccay, a

small village located within an hour’s walk of Huaychao. Mama Juana expressed,

“[P]eople from Uchuraccay copied us, because they said that [the guerrillas] were bad

people. People from Uchuraccay said, ‘Just as they killed in Huaychao so will we.’

…[T]hey adhered to this thought of killing, and they said ‘we won’t get them with

knives, but with our bare hands.’”91 According to some reports, comuneros from

87 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

88 Interview with Isidro Huamán, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

89 Comisión Investigadora, Informe sobre los sucesos de Uchuraccay, 13.

90 “Temor y muerte en las alturas,” Caretas 734, 7 Feburary 1983, 15-17.

91 Interview with Juana Ccente, Huanta City (9 June 2006).

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Uchuraccay, aided by ronderos from Huaychao, killed five presumed guerrillas around

22 January 1983.92

It appears that some of Uchuraccay’s villagers initially lent their support to the insurgents, which had been a major source of friction within the community. On the morning of 26 January 1983, authorities confronted one young comunero whom they believed to be involved with the insurgents. The young man had spent some time in

Huanta City, spoke Spanish, and even dressed differently than most comuneros. As a penalty for his alleged collaboration with the rebels, communal leaders compelled the youngster to pay a penalty in the form of aguardiente.93 Later that afternoon, village authorities were gathered at the house of the Lieutenant Governor sipping on the young man’s alcohol when they heard a shout from outside: “The terrorists are coming!” The authorities-cum ronderos hurried outside just in time to see a group of eight forasteros approaching the community. The authorities, joined by other comuneros, surrounded the strangers as another group of villagers, armed with sticks, stones, hatchets and lassos, tracked down a ninth man, a campesino who appeared to have been serving as the group’s guide. The foreigners carried not weapons but cameras, and in Quechua a few from the group insisted that they were not senderistas but periodistas (journalists), en route to Huaychao to investigate the lynching that had taken place there days earlier. The uchuraccaínos were not convinced, for after the Huaychao lynching they had been told by the sinchis that the guerrillas always traveled on foot and that any strangers coming

92 Comisión Investigadora, Informe sobre los sucesos de Uchuraccay, 13; Amnesty International, “Uchuraccay y Huaychao” (Report filed at the CEDOC library of the PUCP, Lima, date unknown), 1.

93 Hiromi Hosoya, La memoria post-colonial: Tiempo, espacio y discursos sobre los sucesos de Uchuraccay (Documento de Trabajo, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003), 24.

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into the area in anything other than aircraft and military uniforms needed to be treated

with suspicion.94 These forasteros fit the profile. One of the “outsiders,” sensing the

hostility coming from the comuneros, spotted a young man dressed in “urban” clothing

and called him over. “Hey, young man, do you speak Spanish? We’re not terrucos,

we’re journalists,” he said, hoping that this “urbanized” villager would come to their

defense. And he did. But fortune was not with the mestizos, for the young man in whose hands they had placed their fate was the same youngster whom local authorities had accused of working with the senderistas earlier that morning. His willingness to aid these strangers only further cemented comuneros’ convictions that the outsiders were indeed subversives.95 Rather than risk being wrong, the vigilantes roughed up the

strangers and hauled them into the town center, where some forty comunero men, women and children carried out a brutal execution of the eight self-proclaimed journalists, their campesino guide, and a local peasant who had defended them.96

Only later would the uchuraccaínos realize that they had killed eight of the

country’s most respected journalists. The journalists were Eduardo de la Piniella, Pedro

Sánchez and Félix Gavilán of El Diario de Marka; Jorge Luis Mendívil and Willy Retto of El Observador; Jorge Sedano of La República; Amador García of Oiga; and Octavio

Infante of Noticias. The “Uchuraccay Massacre” would go down as one of the darkest,

most controversial moments of the civil war—and indeed, in Peruvian history. It sparked

three government sponsored investigations, including the one launched on 2 February

94 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 134-136.

95 Hosoya, La memoria post-colonial, 24-25.

96 CVR, Informe Final vol. 5, 136-137.

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1983 by the Investigative Commission on the Events of Uchuraccay (Comisión

Investigadora), headed by none other than Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.97 Each of these investigations has received heavy criticism and has been the subject of intense academic and political debate.98 The current study does not pretend to shed further light

on the massacre; it leaves this task to other scholars.99 For the purposes of this

discussion, the Uchuraccay massacre represents the extreme point of indigenous

Iquichanos’ commitment to keeping Shining Path rebels from infiltrating their

communities.

Ayacuchans at Arms

In February 1983, within weeks of the counterinsurgency uprising in the Huanta

highlands, comuneros from Sacsamarca, in present-day Huancasancos Province, learned that senderista militants had already ‘black listed’ some of them. Comuneros met under cover of darkness in the hills surrounding the village to contemplate their response.

During these secret meetings, peasants decided to rise up against the leftists. Success, these men stressed, would depend on their ability to keep the plans for the assault a secret. As one peasant who attended these clandestine gatherings told the Truth

Commission, “No one could know, it was a matter of life and death, we were prohibited

97 The other two investigations were the ones carried out by the Poder Judicial, issued on 9 March 1987, which brought criminal charges against the alleged perpetrators of the assault, and the one conducted by the Truth Commission and summarized in its 2003 Informe Final.

98 Most notably by anthropologist Rodrigo Montoya, who has challenged the investigators in each of the investigations for their unwillingness to implicate the state’s counterinsurgency forces in the execution of the massacre. See Montoya, Eulogio de la antropología, 261-296.

99 For a more historically minded academic study of Uchuraccay, see Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

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from even telling our wives, because people said they were gossips[.]”100 Taking full

advantage of the religious calendar, the clandestine militiamen insisted that local

senderistas allow them to celebrate Carnavales. This was, of course, a direct violation of

revolutionary protocol, but the rebels, perhaps giving in to the temptation to enjoy a night

of partying and drinking, finally granted this seemingly harmless request. The plan

worked, and on the night of the festivities—between 15 and 18 February—the ronderos

made sure that the rebels had plenty of alcohol to drink. One of the conspirators

remembered his role in the plan: “I’m a musician, so, my job was to play the

cortamonte101 with three other people; I wasn’t supposed to drink because I was supposed

to observe every move the terrucos made and make sure they got drunk. So, when they

served me [my drink], I pretended [to drink] and, when no one was looking, I poured it

out, so, that’s why I didn’t get drunk.”102 At around ten o’clock at night, the senderistas, having filled their bellies with alcoholic beverages, called an end to the festivities. Later that night, a group of ronderos snuck in through the roof of the house of one of the rebel leaders. They quietly approached the senderista, who had passed out after a night of heavy drinking, and lodged a crowbar into his gut before stoning him to death. Ronderos detained the remaining guerrillas and locked them up in the local calabozo. As in

100 Quoted in CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 80.

101 Cortamonte is a ritual performed during Carnavales in which villagers take turns chopping down a tree while the others dance and drink in a circle around it. The speaker is referring to the musicians who played instruments during the ceremony.

102 Quoted in Ibid.

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Huaychao, at least one of the subversives managed to escape, which forced villagers to

dispatch a runner to inform security forces of the incident and request military backup.103

Once word of the counter-rebellions in Huaychao and Huancasancos had gotten out to other Ayacuchan communities, peasants across the department began taking similar action. Peasants in the La Mar Province districts of Anco and Chungui, for example, held town assemblies in which they unanimously voted in favor of self-defense:

“In the end we asked ourselves, ‘Are we going to wait our turn or are we also going to defend ourselves?’ And the people cried, ‘No!’ with one voice. ‘One has to die fighting, defending our lives!’”104

Within less than two years, counterinsurgency rondas had developed into a major

social movement throughout the department, with organizations and functions varying

from region to region. On 28 June 1984, inhabitants of the Apurímac River Valley, deep

in the heart of the Ayacuchan jungle, formed the first region-wide defense system, the

Anti-Subversive Civil Defense (DECAS).105 This effort worked; in 1991, 280

communities involved in the regional DECAS had reclaimed control of roughly ninety-

five percent of the former guerrilla stronghold.106 Even communities from which Shining

Path had initially received support eventually fell in line. As early as February 1983

103 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 80-82; For a careful, nuanced analysis of the events leading up to and including the counter-rebellion in Huancasancos see Del Pino, “Looking to the Government.”

104 Quoted in Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes, 113.

105 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 433-435.

106 Ponciano Del Pino, “Tiempos de guerra y de dioses: Ronderos, evangélicos y senderistas en el valle del río Apurímac,” in Las rondas campesinas y la derrota de Sendero Luminoso, eds. Degregori, et al., (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1996), 118.

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peasants in the capital of Cangallo Province waved white flags from their municipal

building, a sign that they were willing to cooperate with the government’s security forces.

Months later, the sinchis had even established a post and organized a civilian patrol in

Chuschi.107 A similar movement took place in the provincial capital of Huamanga, where

by 1984, former Shining Path strongholds Vinchos, San José, and Ticllas had formed

community defenses.108

Beyond Ayacucho

In early March 1990, peasants from a village near Cochas delivered a package to

the provincial army commander of Concepción, twelve miles northwest of Huancayo

(Junín Department). In it were the severed heads of nine senderistas. According to local police, 200 peasants from the newly formed ronda, armed with machetes, sickles, lances, and makeshift shotguns attacked and killed thirteen guerrillas, decapitating all but five of them and putting their heads in bags—along with the communist propaganda and weapons they had been carrying—to be delivered to the Concepción army post. This episode occurred within days of an attack carried out in nearby Comas by ronderos, who

decapitated three male and one female senderista.109 This incident illustrates the fervor

for which peasants outside of Ayacucho supported the counter-rebellion by the early

1990s.

107 Isbell, “Shining Path and Peasant Responses,” 87.

108 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 434.

109 “Peruvian Farmers Said to Kill Rebels,” New York Times, 4 March 1990, A13. This event is also chronicled in Mallon, Peasant and Nation, 306.

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By 1992, over 3,500 villages across the departments of Ayacucho, Apurímac,

Huancavelica, and Junín boasted CDCs.110 In Junín, the Asháninka indígenas from the

central selva (jungle)—armed, initially, with bows and arrows—organized

counterinsurgency militias that rivaled those of the departmental sierra.111 Starn paints a

vivid picture of the Andean political landscape at the time: “[A]lmost every village had a

defense committee across hundreds of rugged kilometers from Andahuaylas to Junín.

Every night, thousands of peasants headed out into the uncertain darkness for their

weekly or monthly turn on patrol. Sentry towers of wood or mud loom[ed] over hundreds of villages and towns, and patrollers staff[ed] hundreds of checkpoints along the pot-holed highways that criss-cross the interiors.”112

The rapid proliferation of the CDCs altered the course of the civil war. As early

as 1985, a disenchanted senderista bemoaned:

In such a short amount of time, these bands have disappeared thousands of people and depopulated many districts. In all the roads they control, they make the transit of unknown persons difficult. They have liquidated tens of comités populares and also hundreds of compañeros from the masses. Because of this, [Sendero] has lost many of its bases of support and 90 percent of our combatants have deserted or fallen into enemy hands. The local force has been debilitated; many of its detachments have turned their superiors over to the enemy and have joined the ranks of the paramilitary bands.113

The militant’s words spoke a chilling truth: the rondas campesinas had developed into a worthy adversary. Indeed, in the Huanta highlands alone the number of deaths caused by

110 Starn, “Villagers at Arms” (1997), 224.

111 Manrique, “The War for the Central Sierra.”

112 Ibid., 227.

113 Quoted in CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 435.

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political violence dropped dramatically from 935 in 1984 to eighty-six by 1992.114 By the early 1990s, the counterinsurgency rondas, together with the state’s security forces, had virtually displaced Shining Path from most of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Junín, Pasco, and Huánuco.115 By 1995, with most key Shining Path leaders behind bars, the rebellion

had been all but defeated due in large part to the efforts of peasant montoneros.

WHY BECOME A RONDERO?

I will now explore the reasons why peasants outside of Huaychao violently

rejected Shining Path’s platform. From this discussion, it should become clear that

several of the factors that led to the initial counter-rebellion in Huaychao were also in

play in peasants’ rejection of the insurgency across the Peruvian countryside. As with the huaychainos, these peasants saw the PCP-SL as a threat to their local experiences and cultural understandings with respect to justice, authority, race, class, gender, and age.

Moreover, they objected to Sendero’s insistence on severing peasants’ access to socioeconomic networks and the state, and they saw the rebels as a threat to their religious sensibilities. Once they began to form CDCs, peasants outside of Huaychao also began using the counterinsurgency to escalate inter-community rivalries, as will now become clear.

114 Orin Starn, “La resistencia de Huanta,” Quehacer 84 (1993): 35.

115 CVR 2003, Informe Final, vol. 2, 442.

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Inter-Community Rivalries

As was the case in Huaychao, ronderos from other Peruvian communities began using the counterinsurgency as a pretext for wreaking havoc on neighboring communities.

Chuschi and Quispillaccta were no exception. Beginning in 1983, we see examples of campesinos from these villages using the counter-insurgency as a weapon

against their adversaries. Just as Isbell hypothesized, this attitude provoked the massive

disappearances of quispillacctinos carried out by Peruvian security forces between 21 and

28 May 1983. One of the quispillacctinos kidnapped during that raid was Toribio

Galindo Casavilca. Nearly twenty years later Toribio’s wife and son recounted the events

to the Truth Commission. He had been working in a faena in Quispillaccta when a

military squadron came looking for him. Toribio surrendered without a fight and went

back to Chuschi with the soldiers. After detaining and killing another quispillacctino in

Catalinayocc, the soldiers put Toribio on a helicopter headed for the military

headquarters in Totos. According to his survivors, the guards briefly put Toribio’s

tormented body on public display in the middle of the “Day of the Campesino” festival a

month later. The soldiers rode their prisoner in on a horse, hands tied behind his back.

They lowered him from the beast and began mocking him, placing potatoes from the

pachamanca (an Andean dish cooked beneath the earth) just out of his mouth’s grasp.

Toribio’s relatives hurried over to try to feed him, but he lacked the energy to eat. After

about three hours, the soldiers tied one end of a rope around the seat of a horse and the

other around Toribio’s neck and sent the horse off into a nearby abyss, dragging the

victim the whole way. That was the last time Toribio’s relatives would see him alive.

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His son expected that a chuschino—possibly one of Toribio’s own relatives—had put the military up to the task.116

The Truth Commission archives are filled with testimonies such as this one.

According to Tomás Espinoza, ronderos from Chuschi went as far as to accompany the soldiers into the barrios of Quispillaccta to kidnap locals such as his brother. Asunción

Galindo was himself kidnapped by the sinchis. At the time, he did not recognize the other campesinos who had accompanied the soldiers that day with sticks and slings, but he later learned that they were chuschinos. Thanks to a daring escape that involved hurling himself into a gorge while soldier’s bullets grazed his side, Asunción lived to tell the story. Emilia Núñez’s husband was not so fortunate. When Emilia attempted to cross the bridge into Chuschi to check the status of her sequestered husband, villagers hurled rocks at her, yelling: “imamantaq kay oqekuna qamuchkan [‘what do these occes want’]?” Emilia, who would never learn the whereabouts of her husband, did not view her neighbors’ behavior as a demonstration of their loyalty to the counterinsurgent state, but rather as evidence that the two villages did not get along well. Andrea Núñez had a similar experience when crossing the Chuschi River, even though the chuschinos never hesitated to cross over into Quispillaccta with the soldiers and burn and loot the homes of local residents. Apparently, such looting on the part of the chuschinos happened more than once, as Virginia Vilca’s testimony indicates: “[T]he soldiers took our husbands and the chuschinos sacked our houses, they took everything, nothing escaped [them], we were left with only the clothes on our backs [nos quedamos con la ropa encima].” The

116 ADP, Testimonio 204576; ADP, Testimonio 200155.

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chuschino looters accused their neighbors of being “terrorists,” but did they really mean

this? The fact that the incursion took place on historically contested territory of

Yuracccruz—the site of so many past inter-community conflicts—suggests otherwise.

Virginia herself cited the longstanding territorial dispute as the true cause for the

invasion, claiming that the chuschinos merely took advantage of the political violence to

take vengeance on their neighbors. “[W]e still have problems, but back then it was worse,” she added.117

Most recorded cases of local peasants using the counterinsurgency to wreak havoc

on their district foes originate in Chuschi. Given its political strength as the district capital, Chuschi was the first to benefit from the installment of a military base in 1983.

This gave the village a strategic advantage over Quispillaccta, for its villagers could denounce their neighbors from across the river as “terrorists” with relative impunity.

However, there are a few cases in which quispillacctinos appear to have used the counter- rebellion to their advantage. One such episode involved Mariano Cayllahua, the quispillacctino elder who always defended Chuschi during boundary disputes. Mariano, one recalls from the previous chapter, had escaped punishment at the hands of the senderistas when the chuschinos came to his aid to chase off his pursuers. It appears that this did not deter his quispillacctino enemies, however, for not long after Sendero

Luminoso lost control over the district, the sinchis kidnapped and disappeared him.

117 ADP, Testimonio 200195; ADP, Testimonio 200186; ADP, Testimonio 200187; ADP, Testimonio 200188; ADP, Testimonio 200176.

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While his son did not blame Mariano’s compoblanos for his kidnapping, it is very likely that they turned to the sinchis to finish the job that the senderistas started.118

While more evidence would be required to demonstrate the existence of pre- insurgency rivalries between the other communities involved in the civil war violence, their actions certainly seem to mirror those which took place in 1980s Huaychao and

Chuschi. For example, shortly after the Huaychao lynching, residents from the community of Balcón, near Tambo, complained that mobs of uchuraccaínos sacked their town in search of senderistas. During the incursion, montoneros allegedly hit residents, raided houses, and made off with valuable items such as sewing machines and radios before hauling off several suspected insurgents to turn them into Tambo authorities.

Over the course of the next few months, authorities from nearby villages described similar incidents for which bands of Iquichano militiamen, armed with sticks, rocks, and slings, looted homes in their searches for senderistas.119 Iquichanos were not the only ronderos to abuse their powers. The Truth Commission recorded several cases involving ronderos from Vinchos and Ticlass whom, “with their faces covered with ski masks, entered a community to organize [a CDC] and took livestock and other goods from the population; they also produced deaths due to their abuses.”120 As stated in the CVR’s

Final Report, montoneros from the Huamanga Province towns of Quinua and Ocros were responsible for the deaths of at least twenty-six innocent civilians as part of “an

118 ADP, Testimonio 200801.

119 Amnesty International, “Uchuraccay y Huaychao,” 18-19.

120 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 446.

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aggressive strategy to destroy neighboring communities[.]”121 Altough one would need to look deeper into the histories of these villages to determine whether inter-village hostilities were at the root of the civil war violence, the evidence provided here render this thesis quite plausible.

Sendero Justice

In other cases, it was the actions and rhetoric of the guerrillas themselves that turned peasants towards the counter-rebellion. To many, Sendero’s arbitrary “popular trials” exceeded the limits of acceptable behavior regarding the administration of justice.

It was one thing to punish—and even kill—notorious moral deviants; it was quite another to kill people simply because they did not share the party’s political ideology. The

Shining Path quickly lost support as it radicalized its tactics in “popular justice.” As the war ensued, Sendero ran out of its easy scapegoats and began killing peasants whose only infraction was that they did not unconditionally support the party. This occurred in April

1984 when Maoists entered the hamlet of Pampacancga and demanded that villagers join the revolution. When the villagers refused, the guerrillas held a “popular trial” for thirty- two comuneros they accused of being police informers and shot, stabbed, or strangled each one to death.122 Dozens of incidents such as this one demonstrated to campesinos that Sendero justice violated peasants’ moral code. As one young farmer bitterly

121 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 2, 446.

122 “Maoist Rebels in Peru Kill 32 in Andes Village,” New York Times, 27 April 1984, A9.

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remembered, “They told us they fought for the poor, yet even the poor suffered from their justice.”123

If anything, peasants felt that the guerrillas were the ones deserving of punishment, as their behavior tended to mirror that of the notorious abigeos. In May

1983, insurgents wearing ski masks and armed with knives looted the Huaychao annex of

Tupín after massacring seven campesinos. According to witnesses, the rebels took everything from the pots of the victims to their animals, before setting their houses ablaze.124 A similar incident took place in Carhuahurán two years later. “They took

everything,” Cristina Piña complained of the senderistas, “I had a tape recorder, they

took that, too[;] they even took our azuquítar [sugar].”125 Acts such as these must

certainly have reinforced natives’ skepticism of the leftists.

The PCP-SL’s escalation of violence even created a backlash in Chuschi. As we

saw in the previous chapter, during the initial years of the insurgency, those villagers who committed any number of social trespasses—abigeato, sexual impropriety, domestic

abuse, drunkenness, free-riding, and the like—were usually publicly castigated by the

rebels and let go with a stern warning not to revert to their old ways. The party’s

chuschinos and quispillacctino supporters were not necessarily opposed to killing

villagers, but they typically reserved this condemnation for individuals who had

habitually committed several of these offenses, to the point where their behavior

appeared socially hazardous. This, of course, was a response to the perceived crises of

123 Quoted in Starn, “Villagers at Arms” (1997), 230.

124 ADP, Testimonio 201699.

125 ADP, Testimonio 200548.

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authority and justice and internal order. Beginning in late-1982, however, the PCP-SL

leadership decided to step up the level of its violence in the countryside, and Chuschi was

no exception. From that moment forward, non-chuschino militants assigned to the

district began targeting individuals for death who had not met this previous criteria.

Fulgencio, our ex-senderista informant, confessed that the rebels had killed his own

father, charging him with adultery. Fulgencio admitted that his father had most likely

been guilty of the offense, but that alone should not have earned him a death sentence.

But it did not end there. By late-1982, PCP-SL insurgents assigned to the district began

killing comuneros who failed to render unconditional support to the guerrilla party. By

1983, the chuschinos had aligned with state security forces to form their own ronda

campesina.126

Socioeconomic Networks

Andean peasants’ very livelihood depended on their access to socioeconomic

networks and opportunities for social mobility. Such a priority did not fit in well with

Sendero’s insistence on a strictly Marxist socioeconomic model. For one, the guerrillas

sought to sever all forms of peasant market participation. In early 1983, for example,

armed comrades shut down the Lirio market and detonated explosives along the major

highway connecting the town to Huanta, thus cutting off a major huantino trade network.127 On 19 February 1989, merchants entering the city of Ayacucho learned that

126 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

127 “The Iquichanos,” New York Times, July 1983, SM33.

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Sendero had promised to kill anyone who traded there that week.128 On 18 April 1989, guerrillas opened fire in an open-air market in Ayacucho City, killing a vegetable merchant and her fifteen-year-old daughter.129 But such scare tactics still could not keep highlanders away from the market. In June 1983, New York Times reporter Edward

Schumacher confirmed indigenous peasants’ commitment to trade when he encountered two Huanta Province highlanders on their way to a supply town to trade their surplus for some cooking oil. This encounter occurred just months after Sendero closed the market at Lirio.130

Another way that Sendero attempted to discourage social stratification was through the elimination of public education. Throughout the countryside, the Maoists sent “messages” to rural poor who affiliated with the Peruvian school system. The Farfán

González family was an ideal target. Juvenal Farfán taught at a high school in Ayacucho

City. His wife, Eldeliza, worked at a nearby elementary school. Their children, twenty- three-year-old Juvenal Jr. and eighteen-year-old Julia, both attended university at

UNSCH. The Farfán González family represented each level of the public school system: elementary school, high school, and university. The six hooded guerrilla assassins probably knew this when they raided the home and gunned down all four family members in early 1989.131 If students and educators were not safe in their own homes, they were even more vulnerable on campus. Schools throughout the department closed

128 “Peru: Rebels Organize Strike to Protest Government Economic Policies,” Chronicle, 21 February 1989.

129 “Peru: Notes on Recent Rebel Attacks,” Chronicle, 4 April 1989.

130 Edward Schumacher, “Insurgency in Peru: The Unarmed Are Dying,” New York Time, 8 June 1983, A1.

131 “Peru: Report on Violence by Rebels, Death Squad,” Chronicle, 31 January 1989.

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down in response to numerous attacks by both the insurgents and security forces.132 This, of course, was exactly what the guerrillas desired. One comunero lamented, “[The senderistas] object to young men continuing in their studies, they don’t even want them to finish primary [school]: ‘one learns more in war,’ they say.”133

Severing peasants’ access to markets and education restricted the avenues though

which they could climb the social ladder. PCP-SL leaders appeared unconcerned that

some peasants actually desired a degree of social mobility within their communities. As

one disgruntled Huanta highlander told Kimberly Theidon, “[T]hose terrorists started

talking the ‘ley de común.’ They said that we were all going to live equal. This was the

ley de común: we were going to put the entire harvest in one room and share it with

everyone. ‘Everybody equal.’”134 To this villager, the PCP-SL’s “egalitarianism” did not

reflected Andean realities, in which campesinos held a much more fluid vision of class.

Authority

While village leaders certainly had their share of enemies within their

communities, most peasants did not share Shining Path’s commitment to decapitating

customary authority altogether. In late 1982—before they had organized a community

defense—villagers from Uchuraccay came face to face with this reality as they watched a

column of senderistas execute community President Alejandro Huamán in a “popular

132 Kirk, The Decade of Chaqwa, 29.

133 Raúl González, “Lo que ata a los campesinos,” Quehacer 24 (1983): 26.

134 Quoted in Kimberly Theidon, “La micropolítica de la reconciliación: Práctica de la justicia en comunidades rurales ayacuchanas,” Allpanchis 60 (2002): 115. Emphasis added.

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trial” in the town center. Not surprisingly, Uchuraccay was one of the first communities to form a CDC.135 The Lieutenant Governor of a hamlet near the departmental capital

fell to this radical policy in January 1984 after a band of one hundred guerrilla foot

soldiers stormed the village, held a brief “popular trial,” and killed the authority along

with fifteen of his followers.136 Three local authorities in Carccampa met a similar fate in

mid-1986 after rebels set flames to the hamlet’s symbolic political structure, the

despacho.137 These actions left a tremendous impact on village power structures. Juan

Pardo, comunero of the Huamanga Province hamlet of Vinchos, recalled, “In those

days—between 1980 and 1985—there was no teniente, no Mayor, no judge, nor

anything in this village because the senderos [sic] were there, they wouldn’t allow it.”138

The organization of community defenses in these communities can be seen as an effort by campesinos to fill this traditional power vacuum.

The PCP-SL’s uncompromising position regarding communal authority created tensions in Chuschi as well. While many villagers supported the idea of publically ridiculing and casting out abusive qala officials, they saw no reason to target authorities whom they viewed as legitimate. Nevertheless, beginning around 1983, non-chuschino rebels killed several indigenous authorities, men such as indigenous leaders Francisco

135 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 130-31.

136 “Shining Path Murders Ayacucho Official, Peasants,” Foreign Broadcast Information Service Report, 20 January 1984, J 2.

137 “Rebels in Peru Are Reported to Kill 4 in a Raid on Town,” New York Times, 5 March 1986, A10.

138 Juan Pardo [pseud.], “Ya no sufrimos más matanzas,” in Hablan los ronderos: La búsqueda por la paz en los Andes, ed. Orin Starn (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1993), 43.

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Vilca and Juan Cayllahua, whom many peasants championed for breaking the race barrier

of the district-level bureaucracy. Fulgencio said of Cayllahua:

That guy was a comunero. …He was a varayoq first when I was still in school. Then he helped out in church. …He was always going to church, and that was when he started to climb up [the political ladder]. He was a guy who always had the community’s best interest in mind, and he made it to be President of the community. …Because he was a really good leader who knew how to organize things and make good decisions. I don’t even think he was literate, but he even made it to be Mayor!

Chuschinos like Fulgencio who had held indigenous leaders such as Cayllahua and Vilca

in high regard simply could not support the non-chuschino militants’ decision to

assassinate them. This logic did not only apply to indigenous authorities. Senderista

outsiders also submitted esteemed qala leader Ernesto Jaime to a punishment of

whiplashes, dubbing him a “gamonal.” Had the militants done their homework, they

would have realized that Jaime was one of the few mestizo leaders comuneros saw as

legitimate. Once these “legitimate” and respected authorities came under attack, many

villagers—including local senderistas like Fulgencio—decided that they had had enough

and cut all remaining ties with the guerrillas. According to Fulgencio, he and the other

chuschino guerrillas held clandestine meetings with “legitimate” authorities and village

elders sometime around 1983 to decide their next course of action. There, it was decided

that the chuschino senderistas would desert the guerrilla army. Fulgencio was one of

several chuschino youths to do so, cutting off all ties with the senderistas and seeking out

a new civilian life in Ayacuco City, where he remains today.139

139 Interview with Fulgencio Makta, Ayacucho City (31 July 2007).

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Age

Many peasants objected to the revolutionaries’ treatment of elderly peasants.

‘Miguel’ remembered: “[R]espect for life and the elderly…did not exist. …If an elder could no longer work, they would say: ‘We’re going to have to kill this old man.’”140

Peasants believed that senderistas simply did not understand the value of elders in

Andean culture. One peasant maintained, “They did not want to capture the prestigious group, the oldest ones…whom the communities respected and obeyed. They only sought out the youngest, the campesinos of 13, 14, or 15 years. …[They did not realize that]

[a]mongst youngsters communication is much more difficult.”141

At the same time, senderistas lacked the instinct to “protect” peasant children.

An early demonstration of this occurred in November 1983, when masked leftists killed twenty-seven peasants at a wedding party in Socos and dumped their bodies in a nearby gully; twelve of the victims were children.142 Aside from killing children, the group

dared to recruit and kidnap children to swell its ranks. A former captain of the Peruvian

security forces recalled his surprise at coming face to face with the enemy: “I saw

someone with a machine gun, but I shot first. …It was a 13 or 14-year old Indian. He

was dying in front of me crying.”143 If this image was difficult for the mestizo captain to

bear, adult campesinos found it unacceptable. Amadeo Urbano, a campesino from an

140 Francisco Reyes, “Ronderos combaten a senderistas por todo Ayacucho,” La República, 27 June 1992, 15.

141González, “Lo que ata a los campesinos,” 26.

142 “Peru Finds Bodies of 27 Killed at Party,” New York Times, 19 November 1983, 5.

143 Felix Atencio-González, “Stolen Childhood in Peruvian Armed Conflict: 13-year-old Soldiers,” News from Indian Country, 15 December 1999, A9.

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Iquichano village near Huaychao, mentioned that in one of Sendero’s early assaults on

his village, the insurgents took with them six young boys and girls. Days later, the

children returned to the village as if they were “already part of Sendero.” After combing

the hamlet for local authorities, the children vanished, never to be seen again.144 Del Pino

cites several cases in which adult men and women refused to allow cadres to abduct

village children.145 According to him, the forced recruitments of peasant children

sparked the first signs of discontent within highland communities, demonstrating that

indigenous adults were willing to do whatever they deemed necessary to protect their

children.

Gender

Of course, children were not the only ones whom peasant men saw as in need of

protection, and the defense of women surfaced as a motivating factor in the peasant

counter-rebellion throughout Peru. Miguel, a young peasant from the Apurímac River

Valley, had joined the insurrection, but became so fed up with the PCP-SL’s tactics that

he returned to his home community to head its CDC. Sendero’s mistreatment of peasant

women played a significant role in his decision to resist: “When [senderistas] see pretty

girls they say: ‘You will be my “protection,”’ and they take them away. Once they are

bored with them, they say: ‘You don’t work well with me’ and they ditch her.”146 In addition to “stealing” and mistreating peasant women, rebels attacked them. At around 6

144 ADP, Testimonio 200684.

145 Del Pino, “Family, Culture, and ‘Revolution’”.

146 Francisco Reyes, “Ronderos combaten a senderistas,” 15.

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o’clock on Christmas morning 1984, male and female revolutionaries gathered the inhabitants of Carhuahurán in the town meeting center. After deriding villagers for extending room and board to members of the Armed Forces, the insurgents had hoped to make an example of the Lieutenant Governor of Carhuahurán, but he was nowhere to be found. Without hesitation, rebels called his wife forward and executed her on the spot, along with two other women and three men.147 Stories such as this one mounted as the

civil war progressed. After slitting the throats of thirty-seven comuneros, the

Communists in an Apurímac River Valley hamlet chased down a woman attempting to

escape the massacre with her infant child. The campesina did not get far before both she

and her child were shot from behind and killed.148

As was the case in Huaychao, indigenous men in other Ayacuchan communities

felt threatened by the “audacious” behavior of female insurgents. In the aforementioned

testimony regarding the 1983 massacre and looting in Tupín, the campesino witness emphasized the participation of female insurgents in the burning and looting of his town.

Within months of the episode, peasants from Tupín had joined central Huaychao in forming a CDC.149 In a neighboring community, Amadeo Urbano found himself being ordered around by a female senderista whom he had never met. After obliging Amadeo to offer her lodging in his home, she commanded: “[N]ow let’s eat[.] [G]o kill one of

your sheep so I can show you how to cook.” Perhaps sensing Amadeo’s hesitancy, the senderista threatened to kill Amadeo’s wife if he did not comply. After several hours had

147 ADP, Testimonio 200548.

148 “Peruvian Rebels Said to Kill 39 Villagers in Revenge Act,” New York Times, 5 March 1989, 8.

149 ADP, Testimonio 201699.

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passed, the woman began to undress right in front of him and ordered him to fetch his

wife’s clothing: “Just let me borrow it,” she ordered. Having emulated the peasant woman “look,” the rebel had Amadeo accompany her to the house of a neighbor who

most likely had been aiding the rebels.150

At the same time, Sendero’s efforts to politicize campesinas through their

participation in party-administered “women’s committees” struck a nerve with village

patriarchs. As early as October 1982, senderistas had infiltrated the village of

Uchuraccay. Some villagers were open to the guerrilla’s message until they learned that

the rebels had organized a women’s meeting at the local school. This immediately set off

alarms amongst comunero men, who interrogated their female neighbors: “What type of

meeting will this be? We want to listen too, we want to know, we’re your fathers and

husbands[.]”151 When it appeared that the meeting would go on as scheduled, the men

took action, holding their own secret meetings to discuss how to go about preventing the

women’s meeting from taking place. In a coordinated action led by community President

Alejandro Huamán Leandro, comunero men captured one female and five male

senderistas. The rebels pleaded with their captors to release them, begging forgiveness

for their social trespasses. The authorities decided that it was best to kill them, but

several villagers objected. The uchuraccaínos agreed to set the senderistas free, on the

condition that they never return. Had they gone through with killing the insurgents,

Uchuraccay—and not Huaychao—would have been the first community to revolt against

150 ADP, Testimonio 200684.

151 Quoted in CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 130.

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the rebels. In any event, the indigenous peasants from Uchuraccay would soon join

forces with their neighbors from Huaychao in the regional counterinsurgency.152

After the counterinsurgency began, paternalistic and patriarchal values continued

to motivate montoneros from the Iquichano highlands, as the following case from 1985

Carhuahurán demonstrates. One late August morning, rondero Lucio Huanaco left his

home to attend to some duties at the regional military base. Before leaving, the patriarch

reminded his wife, Cristina, “[B]ring me my lunch at noon, because I won’t have time to

come back.” Roughly an hour before Cristina was to bring her husband his lunch, her

daughters came to the house to tell her the bad news: rebels had shot Lucio, and he was

being attended to in a room at the local school. Cristina hurried over to the location, but

military personnel prohibited her from entering, despite her tearful pleas. Finally, at

around 5 o’clock in the evening, a military helicopter arrived at the scene to transport

Lucio to a hospital. Cristina could only watch from a distance as her husband was

whisked away on a stretcher into the aircraft. “[H]e was in really bad shape, the bullet

had entered through the chest and come out through the back, he couldn’t speak,”

Cristina told the Truth Commission. Just before her dying husband entered the

helicopter, Cristina overheard him utter: “Tell my wife not to cry.” Those would be the

last words she heard Lucio speak, for after weather conditions prohibited the helicopter

from taking off, Lucio returned to the military base and died there hours later.153 In his final hours of life, then, the indigenous rondero found himself preoccupied not with the

152 CVR, Informe Final, vol. 5, 129-130.

153 ADP, Testimonio, 200548.

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defense of his nation or the security of his community, but with his wife’s emotional

well-being. Shining Path clearly did not share these familial, paternalistic affinities.

Indigenos-State Relations

Sendero also required peasants to break all relations with the state. Although I have not focused on this aspect of the counter-rebellion in Huaychao, it appears to have been a factor in peasants’ decision to resist the rebels elsewhere. In the words of one

Peruvian journalist, “Here in Peru, in the Andean sierra, Sendero considers everyone who has [anything] to do with the State… shenshi [a term used during the Chinese Revolution to identify the enemy].”154 In mid-1984, a battalion of 300 armed rebels assassinated

fourteen residents of Huancasancos for “collaborating with the state.”155 Just what

constituted this collaboration? In this case, the villagers had disobeyed rebel orders to

eliminate a nearby Civil Guard post. On other occasions, rebels carried out massacres in

villages where a significant number of campesinos had voted in local or regional

elections.156 A peasant who simply questioned Shining Path’s tactics or ideology might

wind up lying face down in a ditch with the sign “asi mueren los soplones [‘this is how

snitches die’]” posted to his or her back.157 In other words, Sendero tolerated nothing

short of total submission to the “revolutionary state.”

154 Raúl González, “El terror Senderista,” Quehacer 30 (1984): 16.

155 “Rebels Said to Attack Five Villages in Peru,” New York Times, 25 June 25 1984, A5.

156 “Peru Checking Report Linking Police to Killings,” NewYork Times. 25 November 1983, A7.

157 Juan Granda Oré, “Los tiempos del temor: Cronología ayacuchana,” Quehacer 60 (1989): 86.

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Religion

The party also made a point of suppressing all religious institutions and practices

in the countryside. Today in Huaychao a lone steeple at the far end of the plaza marks

the only remnants of the Catholic church that Sendero burned to the ground during an

August 1983 raid.158 In nearby Carhuahurán, rebels made townspeople gather in the

plaza to stand witness as they set the Catholic church and other administrative centers on

fire.159 In addition to these symbolic attacks, rebels denounced clerics. When asked to

speculate how religion would have changed in Huaychao had the rebels succeeded, tayta

Ciprián speculated, “I’m sure [the rebels] would have hated [religion], because they used to say, ‘[Christians] are fooling the people.’”160 Rebels spoke no less critically of the

Evangelist faith. One of tayta Ciprián’s neighbors quoted the rebels as saying,

“Evangelicals are wrong and they pray in vain because there is no God in the sky; there is nothing but air up there.”161 The PCP-SL’s uncompromising opposition to religion did

not coalesce with peasants who saw religion as fundamental to their community’s social

and cultural fabric.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Whether imposed on them by Peruvian security forces or mobilized through

grassroots efforts, indigenous peasants hoped that rondas campesinas would defend their

158 ADP, Testimonio 201700.

159 ADP, Testimonio 200548.

160 Interview with Ciprián Quispe, Huaychao (21 May 2006).

161 Interview with Marcelino Huanta. Huaychao (21May 2006).

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communities’ traditional structures, values, and practices. Some of the most vocal opponents to Sendero were village authorities, who feared that they would relinquish their local hegemony to the senderistas. While some villagers detested these local authorities, most believed that the existence of a few corrupt officials was not cause enough to do away with the entire cargo system, which served a practical purpose with

respect to preserving internal order. At the same time, villagers saw no need to replace the long-established rule and wisdom of elderly men with that of a bunch of teenagers

carrying college degrees. Literacy and youth were no substitute for life experience in a

rural society. And if the thought of youths calling the shots made traditional patriarchs

quiver, the idea of women making political and military decisions outraged them; this

went against the long tradition of Andean patriarchy. This, taken together with peasant

men’s suspicions regarding the senderistas’ intentions with their women, was enough to

turn them against the rebels. Moreover, Sendero’s idea of justice was no easy substitute

for customary law, which peasants in some communities saw as just and necessary.

Peasants in Huaychao, for example, saw no reason to kill their former landowners, who

had not violated their social compact with the peasantry. Finally, the decision to resist

Shining Path provided villagers in some communities with an opportunity to reassert their

regional hegemony vis-à-vis neighboring villages. In sum, Shining Path represented what

Quechua-speakers refer to as chaqwa, that is, complete and total disorder within their

communities, which explains why one Iquichano told Theidon, “someone needs to

impose order here.”162

162 See Kirk, The Decade of Chaqwa; Quote from Theidon, “Terror’s Talk,” Dialectical Anthropology 26 (2001): 27.

Conclusion: Turning the Corner

What I have attempted to do in this study is provide a narrative of local history as

reported by the indigenous peasants who lived it. Many of these accounts went directly

from the lips of these actors or their legal representatives to state authorities, while others were passed on verbally to me and my research assistants by the same actors several decades later. Therefore, the episodes described in the preceding chapters should be taken as biased, mediated, and incomplete interpretations of historical experience and not

as “accurate” accounts per se. What these accounts do illustrate, however, is how these

interpretations influenced collective memory in the years leading up to the Shining Path

insurgency. And in the end, it was this shared historical memory, more than the history

itself, which determined how indigenous peasants would respond to the insurgency.

In the first chapter I examined the relationships and conflicts that emerged

between indigenous peasant villagers. Here, we got a sense of the frustration felt by

comuneros in Chuschi and Quispillaccta over the inability of state and indigenous

authorities to curb the immoral behavior of local “deviants.” This group was made up of

wife beaters, the sexually “immoral”—womanizers, cheating spouses, and committers of

incest—alcoholics, abigeos, and free-riders. While most villagers were willing to tolerate

each of these moral trespasses to some degree, they feared that those who committed

them in excess were upsetting the communitarian ethos, social equilibrium, and public

order of the village. In refusing to submit to social pressure or traditional and state

authority, these violators emerged as a category of illegitimate power holders. Yet

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instead of stemming from their wealth, race, or political rank, their power derived from their ability to elude social justice and intimidate their compoblanos. Of course, Chuschi was not the only district to experience this type of conflict. Disputes between indigenous peasants in Huaychao often involved accusations of the same types of social and moral trespasses as in Chuschi. The main difference between the two communities was that huaychainos felt that power rested in the legitimate realm of customary authorities precisely because these authorities were in charge of a traditional system of justice that had largely prevented individuals from becoming “delinquents.” Thus, while villagers in

Chuschi were experiencing a mounting sense of disorder and injustice in the years preceding the armed conflict, huaychainos appreciated their authorities’ ability to administer justice and uphold public order.

In chapter two, we turned to social interactions between comuneros and non- indigenous power holders. Chuschi’s mestizo residents had been steadily consolidating their political and economic capital in the years leading up to the Shining Path uprising.

While they were not hacienda owners, they did own large portions of land within the community, and often their consolidation of land came at the expense of indigenous villagers’ communal and private holdings. Moreover, men from these elite families occupied most positions of local political authority outside of the indigenous chieftainship, the varayoqs. These qala notables made a concerted effort to subordinate the indigenous prestige hierarchy to their own, thus undermining comuneros’ political autonomy. Qala families controlled local politics, schools, landholdings, and trade. To be sure, this was no novelty for the Andes; non-indigenous patriarchs had been consolidating their political and economic capital since the Spanish conquest. What was

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unique this time around was the attitude widely held among villagers in the decades

preceding the Shining Path uprising that these qalas had overstepped the boundaries of

their culturally defined social pact with the indigenous comuneros, thus creating a crisis

of authority within the village. The testimonies provided to me and my research assistants by indigenous elders in 2007 echoed peasant grievances from the 1960s and

1970s regarding the qalas’ shrewd abuse of customary patron-client relationships. The qalas, indigenous campesinos complained, would exploit customary compadrazgo relationships by compelling their indigenous godchildren to work long hours without pay in their fields, shops, homes, and political offices. This would not have been so bad, comuneros maintained, were it not for the fact that the qalas had been abandoning their own end of the social compact, in which they were expected to provide financial and moral guidance as well as physical protection to their indigenous godchildren. Equally unsettling, these mestizo notables seemed more concerned with consolidating their own political and economic capital than with meeting villagers’ expectations of reciprocity or safeguarding village integrity—another clear subversion of the paternalistic status quo.

This blatant abuse of a traditional Andean power relationship that was designed to be mutually—albeit, unevenly—beneficial for both the patron and the client made many villagers open to Shining Path’s critique of Peru’s “semi-feudal” rural structures.

Conversely, huaychainos had rather fond memories of their former hacendados.

They applauded their efforts to fuel peones with chicha and coca leaves in exchange for their services, a gesture that demonstrated their respect for implicit codes of reciprocity.

While most remembered Rafael Chávez resorting to the occasional use of physical violence, they felt that many of these punishments had been merited, for they were social

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and moral trespasses that the indigenous peasants themselves frowned upon—the same

ones outlined in chapter one. In other words, huaychainos recognized the important

function of their mestizo lord in administering justice and upholding public order. We learned from these recollections that indigenous peasants were willing to look past the occasional physical abuses meted out by a mestizo landowner as long as he could justify that his actions signified the maintenance of this internal order. Accordingly, Chávez’s verga whip stood as a public symbol for the mestizo’s patriarchal (e.g., masculine) authority on the one hand, and of his power to bring justice and public order on the other.

Sendero’s critique of Peru’s “semi-feudal” relationships failed to account for an indigenous worldview that clearly established the parameters of acceptable behavior vis-

à-vis race, class, and authority.

While the first two chapters discussed intra-community relationships and conflicts, the third chapter examined inter-community relations. Here, I introduced the historic rivalry between Chuschi and its neighboring village, Quispillaccta. Separated literally by nothing more than a small river, Chuschi and Quispillaccta had been engaged in an ongoing struggle over the control of land, livestock, religious symbols, ethnic hegemony, and women in the four decades leading up to the Shining Path rebellion. This feud culminated in a series of bloody altercations between 1960 and 1962 that left three quispillacctinos and one chuschino dead, with dozens more wounded on both sides. The

Shining Path rebellion offered peasants an opportunity in these villages to settle scores that still lingered from these earlier episodes.

In Huaychao, we discovered that civil-religious, trade, kinship, and political networks served to reinforce inter-village cooperation between Iquichano communities.

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Still, these structural mechanisms could not altogether prevent inter-village conflict, and we found two types of conflict to be the most common. The first was the gendered conflict in which men from different villages engaged in brawls, pitched battles, and rape of women. While these conflicts sometimes resulted in bloodshed, villagers were willing to look past them provided that they occurred during the socially accepted space of the regional fiesta. Other inter-village conflicts that emerged between Iquichano villages took on political undertones, as each community competed for political autonomy after the Agrarian Reform of the early 1970s. At the same time that they competed for this autonomy, however, villagers in 2006 joked about how they used the counter-insurgency to intimidate peasants from rival villages and gain the upper hand in the regional power struggle.

In the final two chapters, we showed how these local histories conditioned indigenous peasants’ responses to the 1980s Shining Path insurgency. We found that many of the people targeted by Shining Path militants in Chuschi and Quispillaccta during the initial years of the insurrection were the same figures who appeared and reappeared in local conflicts during the lead-up to the armed struggle: local deviants, mestizo power holders, and peasants from the rival village. Even when these victims were not the same individuals who were involved in these earlier disputes, they often came from the same social strata. In this way, local support for Shining Path in Chuschi and Quispillaccta can be seen as a direct attempt by indigenous comuneros to address perceived crises in public order, justice, and authority. In Huaychao, on the other hand, most villagers felt that their traditional system of authority, justice, and reciprocity had succeeded in preventing local deviants, mestizo power holders, and neighboring villages

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from disrupting their political and social order. This explains why Shining Path’s

proposal to implant their own system of justice against abusive land owners, authorities,

and criminals fell on deaf ears in Huaychao. In fact, villagers saw Shining Path’s radical

vision of social justice and power relations as enough of a threat to the local status quo to

resist violently. Once they became active participants in the counterinsurgency effort,

however, huaychainos proved no less willing to resist the temptation to intimidate and

harass neighbors from rival villages than their chuschino counterparts who supported

Sendero.

TURNING THE CORNER: BEYOND AYACUCHO

But this study is about more than two remote villages in the Andes. I would like to end by discussing some of the implications of my research. Coming full circle, I will begin with a discussion of how my microhistorical, cultural approach to subaltern

political action dialogues with the theoretical contributions outlined in the introduction. I

will then make a case for the fusion of historical and anthropological methodologies in

subaltern studies. Finally, I will leave the reader with some suggestions about new

directions in the study of indigenous peasant politics.

This study illustrates the value of using microhistorical, cultural analysis to

explain large-scale mobilization and violence. In doing so, it searches for an explanation

of collective action and civil war that moves beyond—while not eschewing—theories of

coercion, class position, and ideology. Let us begin with this first concept. There can be

no doubt that both the PCP-SL and the Peruvian state used coercion and intimidation to

garner “support” during the civil war. What I have attempted to do in this study is show

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that the indigenous peasants who participated in the civil war violence were not

necessarily passive victims in the process. Then, as now, they possessed and exhibited a certain degree of agency as rational actors, but as rational actors caught up in a complex historical struggle over ideology and power. They were “rational” to the extent that they weighed—in accordance with their lived experiences and cultural understandings—the

pros and cons of rendering support to the guerrillas. In communities that had experienced

mounting conflict and manifold structural crises, Shining Path’s message had significant resonance. In communities where this had not occurred, villagers perceived the movement itself to be a threat to the status quo. The central point here is that,

particularly during the first three years of armed conflict when the PCP-SL had not yet begun to kill large numbers of peasants, indigenous peasants were not simply being used by the competing armies of the state and Shining Path; they were also the ones doing the using.

Now to return to the issues of ideology and class interest. Here, I find Stuart

Hall’s argument particularly useful that “class interest, class position, and material factors are useful, even necessary, starting points in the ideological formation. But they are not sufficient—because they are not sufficiently determinate—to account for the actual empirical disposition and movement of ideas in real historical societies.”1 To extend

Hall’s argument to the Peruvian case, we might argue that there is no guarantee of an

articulation between class position and the particular ideologies of the PCP-SL or the

Peruvian state. As our localized analysis has made clear, the leaders of Shining Path and

1 Stuart Hall, “The Toad in the Garden: Thatcherism among the Theorists,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 45.

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the Peruvian state often had specific ideological agendas, but the indigenous peasants who supported the Maoist revolution did not necessarily share these agendas. This is not to say that political ideology and class consciousness were non-factors in Quechua- speaking highlanders’ decision to support or resist Shining Path. On the contrary, as historians Ponciano Del Pino, Jaymie Heilman, and Cecilia Méndez have shown,

Ayacucho’s indigenous peasants have been shaping and shaped by national-level political

developments and discourses throughout the republican period, and the Shining Path

insurgency is no exception.2 My study in no way refutes this perspective but rather

complements it by demonstrating that cultural factors also played a major role. Taking

the lead of the New Cultural Historians, I have emphasized that the meanings that

indigenous villagers derived from their experiences with respect to gender, class, age,

race, power, public order, and justice were just as important as—but no more important

than—their political and economic experiences as Peruvian citizens in shaping their

responses to the civil war.

I have found that one of the most useful ways of arriving at this cultural approach

is through a fusion of historical and anthropological research methods. As anthropologist

Nicholas Dirks illustrates from his own experience, the archive itself can be an

intimidating terrain for the non-historian:

The first time I entered the archive, I panicked. My historical zeal inextricably vanished as I desperately stemmed a welling desire to exit immediately and search for the nearest pub. I saw before me thousands of documents I could indent, the books I could read, the files I had to wade through. I tried to imagine which index to consult, what department to decipher, how best to control the chaos of what seemed an infinite chain of documents. My proposal for

2 Del Pino, “Looking to the Government”; Heilman, “By Other Means”; Méndez, The Plebeian Republic.

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research, so lucid a minute before, seemed inappropriate, unwise, impossible.3

This experience is not limited to anthropologists, as most historians, myself included,

have had similar experiences the first time they entered an archive. Yet as a trained

historian, I knew that this was to be expected, that I would have to suppress these

anxieties and plug forward—I had to; my research depended on it. The reason for this

was that I shared the conventional wisdom within my discipline that, as Dirks so aptly

summarizes, “historians can only really become historians or write history once they have

been to the archive.”4

Conversely, it was my introduction to ethnographic field work that I found every

bit as chaotic, unfamiliar, and intimidating as Dirks’s first visit to the archive. I came to

this realization during my first visit to Chuschi in July 2007. Julián and I got to the

shuttle station at 3:55 a.m. to catch the 4 o’clock combi from Ayacucho City to Chuschi.

It was dark, the shuttle was overcrowded, and we were tired, but it did not take long for

us to realize that Alberto, our main Chuschi contact, was not there. Julián jumped into a

taxi cab to swing by Alberto’s place, suspecting that the chuschino researcher had slept

in. As I sat there on the shuttle guarding my friends’ seats with gusto, I thought, “Great.

Now this shuttle is going to take off and I’ll be arriving to Chuschi for the first time alone.” A few moments later, Alberto arrived. I told him Julián had just left to get him.

He frowned, “Why? Didn’t we agree to meet at 4 o’clock?” Luckily, Julián arrived

3 Nicholas B. Dirks, “Annals of the Archive: Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History,” in From the Margins: Historical Anthrropology and its Futures, ed. Brian Keith Axel (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 47.

4 Ibid., 48.

392

within ten minutes, but he could have arrived in thirty and still had time to spare, because

our driver did not leave until almost 5 a.m.

Once on the road, I went over our oral history questions with Alberto, reviewing

key names, dates, and events about chuschino history that I had pulled from the archive.

I told him about Humberto Azcarza, the qala who had been abusing the local indigenous population non-stop between 1935 and 1975. Later on, Alberto showed me an obscure text that he had come across that was a brief history of Quispillaccta, written by quispillacctinos. I leafed through the pages and started reciting what I found to be a very

biased summary of the 1960 conflict between Chuschi and Quispillaccta. Not

surprisingly, the authors charged that the chuschinos were responsible for the whole

thing. The chuschinos, the authors claimed, were led by the likes of Ernesto Jaime,

Humberto Azcarza, and others who were “not chuschinos” but “foreigners” who had settled in Chuschi. “That’s not true,” interrupted the woman sitting directly across from me and with whom I had been grinding knees for the past two hours. “What makes you say that?” I asked, to which she replied, “Humberto Azcarza was my grandfather.” My heart sank and I could feel my face turning flush red. Less than an hour earlier I had been talking about Humberto Azcarza as though he was a villain in a Mel Gibson movie, and his granddaughter had been sitting next to me all along. Rather than apologize, I decided to let her know about my research. She was very friendly, and actually seemed curious to know more: “What other names have you come across in your research? I bet I know them.” We spent the next hour exchanging what we knew of certain names and episodes in chuschino history. Some of them her mother’s father Humberto had told her when she was a young girl living in Chuschi. Others, her father had told her. “What’s your dad’s

393

name? Maybe I’ve come across him in the record,” I asked. “My dad is Blanco.” This

just could not be, I thought, asking “Vicente?” She smiled. “That’s him. You’ve heard

of him?” Now, I had done more than “hear of” Vicente Blanco. I knew that he had

gotten his fair share of complaints from comuneros during his rise to local political power

in the 1970s. I knew that he had tried to expel anthropologist Billie Jean Isbell from the

community. I knew that he had been charged with rape, murder, and a number of other

crimes against the comuneros. I also knew that during the Shining Path insurgency, the

rebels submitted Blanco to fifty lashes before chasing him out of town. “Yeah, I’ve

heard of him,” was all I had the courage to admit. She said that he was in town for the

Independence Day festivities, and I told her that it would be fabulous to interview him

sometime for our study. She gathered that her father would be happy to participate.

When we got off the bus around 8:00 a.m., I gave her my card and she invited us to come

to her father’s house later that morning. “Can I borrow that book?” she asked Alberto,

referring to the one about Quispillaccta. He agreed, and Alberto, the son of indigenous

comuneros, never saw the book again.5

In many ways, my experience in the field could not have been more different than

what I encountered in the archive. Whereas I found myself eventually taking comfort in the sanctuary of the archive, a location where one dialogues alone and in silence with written texts, I encountered in the field a site where my living human subjects dialogued through actions, spoken words, and gestures. There, at the field site, I had to deal with something I never had to deal with before: people’s feelings. Moreover, mine and my research assistants’ relative power vis-à-vis my research subjects was suddenly more

5 Field Notes, Chuschi (26 July 2007).

394

obvious, as was my subjects’ relative power within the community. How I interpreted

my “data” suddenly mattered in that it could affect my standing with my informants.

This was an important realization for me because it enabled me to return to the archive

with a greater sensitivity about the authority and judgment that I imposed onto the

documentary record.6

At the same time, the written texts that I collected in local, regional, and national

archives and libraries enabled me to conduct much more informed ethnography and oral

history in my field sites. I found this useful first in simply helping my informants to

remember. For instance, whenever an informant told me that he or she could not recall

ever having seen or heard of a given situation, I could readily counter with a historically

specific case to jog their memory. Second, and more importantly, this methodological

approach enabled me to draw important conclusions about the ways that my subjects

construct and employ historical memory. In applying this approach, Andeanist

anthropologist Thomas Abercrombie discovered what he has called “structured

forgetting,” a phenomenon in which informants choose to erase a particular memory from

their collective consciousness in order to better shape the community’s historical narrative.7 Chuschinos’ willingness to overlook the details of qala Ernesto Jaime’s

divorce with his wife in order to paint a more favorable picture of him as a legitimate

mestizo patriarch is a testament to this phenomenon. More often than not, though, I was

impressed with the degree of historical accuracy that my informants exhibited, or at least

6 This is the subject of Axel’s edited anthology. See Brian Keith Axel’s edited anthology, From the Margins: Historical Anthropology and its Futures (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002).

7 Thomas Abercrombie, Pathways of Memory and Power: Ethnography and History Among an Andean People (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 117.

395

the impressive extent to which their recollections matched my findings from the

contemporaneous written record. To this effect, my findings about indigenous

ayacuchanos support those made by historical anthropologist Joanne Rappaport about

Andean peasants in Colombia: “[K]nowledge of the past is a fundamental component to

land disputes, political agreements and arguments over inheritance. It is also central to

efforts at strengthening community identity. …It can serve to maintain power, or become

a vehicle for empowerment.”8 This synthesis of anthropological and historical methods

can be quite useful for subaltern studies in general and specifically for ones that privilege microlocal and cultural analyses.

In sum, my interdisciplinary analysis allows us to appreciate the degree to which local histories of domination and conflict motivated indigenous actors on both sides of the civil war to engage in collective violence. I believe that the deeper we dig into the histories of communities that served as the historic wellsprings of collective action and violence, the more evidence we will find (1) of a disjuncture between the leaders and followers of large-scale movements, and (2) of the historical agency of those subaltern actors. We will find, as this study has shown, that the human and symbolic targets of collective violence are not just political targets, as they often are to the movement’s leaders. Nor are they the random victims of immoral, irrational, and irresponsible insurgents. Particularly during the early phase of political violence, these targets are often the embodiment of illegitimate dominion at the microlevel, their victimization an attempt by subaltern actors to restore justice and public order within a community.

8 Rappaport, The Politics of Memory, 12, 16.

396

I dare not claim that I have discovered the “best” approach to subaltern, peasant,

indigenous, or even Shining Path studies. Nor would I argue that I have somehow cracked the code of collective violence. What I do propose is that scholars move beyond their academic comfort zones and towards a more open-minded approach to these topics.

My ultimate hope is that academics will come around to acknowledging that political as well as cultural ideology, coercion as well as free will, moral as well as political economies, nationalism as well as localism all intertwine to impact subaltern collective action and violence. Only once we move beyond these analytical dichotomies can we begin to appreciate the complexity of subaltern behavior. Likewise, it is in bridging disciplinary boundaries and fully embracing uncomfortable research methodologies that we can begin to approach our own disciplines with more sensitivity. In short, and to return to this study’s opening metaphor, I hope this intellectual open-mindedness will breathe life into the “corners” into which we have recoiled as scholars, or better yet, that it will encourage us to turn the corner.

REFERENCES

Abbreviations

Archivo de la Corte Superior de Justicia de Ayacucho (ACSJA)

Archivo de la Defensoría del Pueblo (ADP)

Archivo General de la Nación (AGN)

Archivo del Ministerio de Agricultura de Ayacucho (AMAA)

Archivo del Proyecto Especial de Titulación de Tierras (APETT)

Archivo Regional de Ayacucho (ARA)

Archivo de la Subprefectura de Huanta (ASH)

Causas Criminales (CC)

Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación (CVR)

Corte Superior de Justicia (CSJ)

Expediente (Exp.)

Fuero Común Agrario (FCA)

Fuero Privativo Agrario (FPA)

Juzgado Penal (JP)

Juzgado de Tierras (JT)

Legajo (Leg.)

Libro de Acta de Chuschi (LAC)

Libro de Acta de Quispillaccta (LAQ)

Ministerio del Interior (MI)

Oficios (Of.)

397

398

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP)

Prefectura de Ayacucho (PA)

Sin Legajo (Sin Leg.)

Subprefectura de Cangallo (SC)

Universidad Nacional San Cristóbal de Huamanga (UNSCH)

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